Experiment number#31
Nov 20, 2016 9:29:12 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Nov 20, 2016 9:29:12 GMT -7
--Name: Blight Aragami —Blood Limit: Human Fly --Age: 21 --Height: 5.9 foot tall --Weight: 200 pounds --Sex: Male -- Alignment: Chaotic Good —Birth: Land of rice —Village: None --Special:
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::Appearance:: His hair is bright crimson red and wavy. His hair is soft to touch and well condition. His hair is medium range length, it doesn’t reach his shoulders, but it’s not exactly short either. The man skin is white, a number of scars from battle and being experimented can be seen if he’s not wearing clothes. From his stomach, back, chest, arms, legs and so forth. On his back are his wings, they’re often hidden away in his clothes to hide and protect them. He has no beard or facial hair for that matter. His natural eye color is red. Besides the neutral expression that he wears when he’s alone, Blight has two others, forward and reverse, that he uses for all of human dealings. His forward expression is steady and driving like the advance of a heavy truck. His eyes never swerved to left or right but turned as the story turned as if they followed a yellow line down the center of it. He usually keeps a serious tone facial expression, outside of when he’s menacing. Then maybe if you look closely, he might actually smile. His outfit is composed of small amount of color, black grey and little white. His jack is black with grey lines going down on both sides. He consists of two grey buttons on top. The inside of his jacket is also black; on top is fur fuzz that’s white. Inside, there is a number of pockets that can hold and held items. On the outside on the site are two additional pockets. There are no zippers like a traditional jacket, but need to be unbuttoned from the top and button. his wrist and upper shoulder is darker black straps that serve no purpose but fashionable sense. Underneath his jacket is black under armor shirt that is tightly fitted to his skin. On his hands are white gloves that prevent his hands getting dirty. His pants are completely black as well. Around his waist is belt holes for a belt to enter through and tight up. He has a white button and a zipper. His feet is black shoes that anyone would enjoy wearing for comfort. |
Experiment # 6 memories
The girl always had mourning clothes with her. That way, the girl can begin a portrait as soon as a request comes in. Like always, today she came in. After she had slipped into her mourning dress in the shed on the pier, gets on the downstream ferry. Her hands were filled, carrying some items. Some painting tools and other garment bag for her mourning dress. The girl had been told that a rich man was dying down the stream. The girl name is Rose, “We must hurry,” she says with a grim smile. “I have to start as soon as possible, the face might change.” “How will it change,” asked Blight. Although, this form Blight is different from the last one, is it the first one or is this someone else memories.
He figures these memories are his but not his. "It's hard to say." There is a deepening strain to Rosa's smile, Blight wonder what sort of deeper entails to it. "It just, I know when I look at it. The face of the other side." Rosa is a professional portraitist of the dead. "Once they've passed over, I can't paint them - at least not in the way that will please the family. It just can't be done."
There a culture of persevering the mask of death that’s widely practiced within this area. Usually, families happen all too poor to hire an artist to dab the face of the dead with a dye and preserve the loved one deathbed expression. They use a rag to press over the dye on the face. Some families make the mask with a plaster. Of course, only the riches of families can afford a professional like Rosa. So, people like her lurk in the background of someone death can be a variety of disputes.
"I have heard families fighting over the inheritance of a dead one behind my back even as I sit there sketching the departed person. One widow presented my portrait of her husband to the court to demonstrate that he had been poisoned before. Another time, some loan sharks waited until the moment the man died and charged right into the house. One husband tried to spit in his wife's face as soon as she gave up the ghost. Apparently, she had been unfaithful to him for years."
Rosa tells her stories with utter detachment. She reveals no emotion at all. Blight can tell she has seen a lot in her profession. This, she says, is indefensible to be becoming an outstanding portraitist of the dead.
"You have to open your sketchbook and get your brushes going with the bereaved family member’s right there, overcome with grief. There's no way you can produce a good portrait if you become emotional or allow yourself to be swept up in emotions of the other people in the house."
Blight says nothing; he sits there in silence and nods his head. Blight only connection with this woman is to have boarded the same boat and sat at the same table. Only a few minutes have passed since she started volunteering her stories, but that is all it has taken for Blight to perceive the hint of nihilism lurking in her beautiful features.
"The more respectable artists hates painters like me." "Why is that?" This has captured his curiosity. He couldn’t understand artist hate another type of artist. "Well, half of them accuse us of making our living from people's deaths. The other half looks down on us for not being moved by what we do. I understand their point. I mean, emotions are what give rise to all the arts, whether it is painting, sculpture, music, or literature. We don't have emotions like that: we're nothing but craftsmen."
Rosa tone in her voice is without a hint of either self-mockery or pride. Her tone suggests that she is merely stating the obvious in an obvious way. Blight takes a little sip of his rye whiskey, and Rosa drinks from her rose-petal tea. Blight is confident this is not his original body memories but someone much older.
However, it is now his memories. The boat makes its leisurely way downstream. The season is spring. The river is elevated with snowmelt, and white water birds have settled on its surface with ripples forming. "Strange,"
Rosa says with a soft giggle, "when I first saw you, I thought you and I must be members of the same profession. Which is why I took the initiative to speak to you..." Blight gives her a strained smile. He knows nothing about painting and he is convinced there is nothing about his appearance that would cause him to be mistaken for an artist. It well could be, however, that in the profile of this man drinking whiskey alone in the afternoon Rosa has recognized the hue of nihilism like her own.
Or then again, she might have perceived the shadow of 'the other side' clinging fast to Blight back. Until a few days ago, Blight was on a battlefield. There, he experienced killing of many enemies and many allies. Blood and gore were everything. The scent of metal still lingers to his nose. However, Blight is unmoved by any of it. Such youthfulness had long since vanished from him.
Rosa says that she is in her mid-thirties and in her tenth year since becoming a portraitist of the dead, which apparently put her near the beginning of her career. "If you wouldn't mind," she adds in, "I have a few more things I'd like to discuss with you." When Blight give a nod silently in compliance, Rosa thanks him and gives him her first heartfelt smile of the day.
Portraitists of the dead are never present while the subject is dying. The very fact that such a professional has been called means that the person's death is imminent; so theirs is seen as a presence of ill omen and even defilement. A family member or friend who has been at the bedside dares to broach the subject quietly in another room.
"Don't you think it may be time to call the painter?"
The answer—whether "Too soon for that" or "I think you may be right"—is delivered in guarded tones. Introduced to the family by the church, the portraitist never enters the house by the front door. Rather, he or she goes around to the back and is shown to the room where the sun cannot penetrate.
There, the painter changes into mourning clothes and waits for the announcement of the death. Eventually, a quiet knock on the door is followed by a summons to appear, and the painter dressed in mourning sets to work. Not all deaths occur at the end of long lifetimes, of course. All too often, the painter must depict the face of one who has died young of illness or accident.
The face that emerges in the artist's sketchbook radiates the delicate vivacity of the one who has just crossed the border dividing life from death, one who has only moments before transitioning from 'this world' to the 'other world'. The work presented to the family is an oil painting done from the sketch, but Rosa believes the sketch itself is a far more authentic portrait of the dead.
"There is nothing quite like the atmosphere in a room where someone has just died. How to put it? It's as though the flow of time has stopped, or time itself has melted into the very air... The sobbing and the wailing sound as if they might last forever, the only movement of time in all this being the way the face of the dead person emerges little by little onto the blank white page of the sketchbook."
She hands Blight her thick sketch pad. "See," she says, showing him countless faces of the dead. "This is two years' worth." Blight studies the sketches. Many of the faces are peaceful, but others are full of agony, and all without exception possess a mysterious presence. They differ unmistakably from faces in sleep. Neither, however, do they look dead. They appear that they might open their eyes at any moment or just as easily crumble to ash. They hover, men and women alike, on the very brink of death. "After the body has cooled, it's too late. It's also too late if the family has begun making its preparation for the funeral. The game is won or lost in those very few minutes follow the death itself. All we can do is start sketching - as efficiently and expeditiously as possible."
With a painful smile, Rosa adds, "In the eyes of the family, though, that makes me a cold-hearted woman." Blight turns the pages of her sketchbook, saying nothing. He would like to tell her that it is the equal on the battlefield. There, no one has sufficient time to mourn the death of a soldier. If you're busy shedding tears instead of doing the next thing, you have to do, you end up being one of those forced to travel to the other world. The final sketch in the book is unfinished: The face of a young girl. The general outlines of the hair and face are sketched in, nothing more. Blight looks questioningly at Rosa.
"My daughter," she says softly. "But why...?" "A portrait painter of the deceased reaches full maturity in the position when she is able to paint a member of her own family. Which only makes sense, I mean, how self-serving is it if you can be coldly objective toward the death of a stranger but not toward a member of your own family?" Her daughter died two years ago, the girl's three short years of life brought to a sudden end by a severe flu that was making the rounds. This even moves him just a bit. "I was holding her hands almost until the moment she died," Rosa says, "I was in tears, calling her name and pleading with her to come back to me, not to die."
After the doctor looked straight at her with a shake of his drooping head, though, Rosa relaxed her daughter's hands and opened her sketchbook. Wiping her tears, she recovered her pencil and tried to sketch her daughter's face. "But I couldnot go through with it. The tears came pouring out of me no matter how much I wiped them. I simply couldn't work." Blight turns his gaze on the uncompleted sketch again.
Some areas of the white paper are wavy - perhaps where Rosa's tears had fallen. "I guess I'm not qualified to be a portraitist of the dead," she says with a smile, glancing down at the river. "But still... If I had to choose one work of art to leave behind, this would be it"
The boat gives a blast of its steam horn. Frightened, the birds on the river leap into the air in a great mass. Blight closes the sketchbook and returns it to Rosa. He considers complimenting her on the excellence of the drawing, but chooses silence instead. Such praise, he feels, could be a sign of disrespect for her work, for Rosa herself, and for her daughter. "I didn't mean to bend your ear like this," she says, "I'm sorry." She stands and peers at Blight once again. "Really, though, you look like a member of my profession."
Blight gives her a strained smile and shakes his head. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that," she responds with a strained smile of her own. "And you probably won't like my saying this, either, but please call me if you ever need a portraitist of the dead."
"I won't need one," Blight says, "I have no family." "No family? Well, then, when your own time comes..." With a little chuckle, Rosa leaves.
Her right hand grasps the case with her painting supplies; her left, the garment bag with mourning clothes. On the lengthy, long road of his life, how many deaths must he encounter? The steam horn blasts again. The boat gradually lowers its speed and edges toward the river bank. The landing draws closer. When he exits the boat, his journey will begin again. It will be a long journey. The next battlefield lies far beyond the mountains that tower in the distance. Shortly after, Blight dies on the battle field and ends up in the same place as the original. Blight wonders though, did Rosa did his portrait?
Experiment #13 memories
He knows that it is pointless. Nevertheless, he cannot suppress the impulse that wells up from within his own flesh. He needs to get done—to hurl his entire body against the bars.This doesn’t do anything. His body simply bounces off the thick iron bars. "Number 8! What the hell are you doing?" The guard's angry shout echoes down the corridor. The prisoners are never called by name, only by the numbers on their cells. Blight is Number 8.
Blight says nothing. Instead, he slams his shoulder against the bars. The massive bars of iron never nudge. All they do be leaving a dull, heavy ache in Blight's superbly conditioned muscles and bones. Now, instead of shouting again, the guard blows his whistle, and the other guard comes running from their station. "Number 8! What's it going to take to make you understand?" "Do you want to be thrown into the punishment cell?"
"Stop looking at me like that. Start resisting, and all it will get you is a longer time in here!"
Sitting on the floor of his cell, legs splayed out, Blight ignores the guards' shouts. He has been to the punishment room any number of times. He knows he has been branded a "highly rebellious prisoner." But he can't help himself. Something is squirming deep down inside him. Some hot thing trapped inside there is seething and writhing.
"Some legendary assassin you turned out to be," says one guard. Ah it see, Blight mutters to himself in his memories. Here, I’m older man, maybe in my 40 or 50s. From talk, I was assassin who was captured. "You can't do shit here. What's the matter, assassin boy? Can't do anything without an enemy staring you in the face?" The guard next to him taunts Blight with laughter. His laugher annoys his ears, they twitch slightly. "Too bad for you, buddy, no enemies here? Nobody from your side, either.
We've got you locked up all by yourself." After the guards leave, Blight curls up on the floor, hugging his knees. Eyes clamped tight.
All by myself—
The guard correct. I thought I was used to living alone, in battle, on the road. But the loneliness here in prison is deeper than any I've ever experienced before. And more frightening. Walls on three sides, and beyond the bars nothing but another wall enclosing the narrow corridor. This dungeon was built so as to prevent prisoners from seeing each other, or even to sense each others' presence.
Even for an assassin who killed hundreds of lives, who escaped countless of times, this sort of setting is worrisome. The total lack of change in the view paralyzes the sense of time as well. Blight has no idea how many days have passed since he was brought in here. Time flows on. That much is certain. However, with nowhere to go, it simply stagnates inside him. The true torture that prison inflicts on a man is neither to rob him of his freedom nor to make him to experience loneliness.
The real punishment is having to live where nothing ever moves in your field of view and time never flows. The water in a river will never putrefy, but lock it in a jar and that is exactly what it will eventually do.The same is quite true here. Maybe parts of him deep down in his body and mind already are beginning to give off a rotten stench. Because he is conscious of this, Blight drags himself up from the floor again and slams himself into the bars over and over.
There is not the remotest chance that doing so will break a bar. Nor does he believe he can manage to escape this way. Still, he does it repeatedly.He can't help himself. He continues to do it again and again. In the instant before his body smashes into that bars—for that split second—a puff of wind strikes his cheek. The unmoving air moves, if only for that brief interval. The touch of the air is the only thing that gives Blight a fragmentary hint of the flow of time.
The guards come running, face grim with anger. Now I can see human shapes where before there was only a wall. That alone is enough to lift my spirits. Don't these guards realize that, Blight thinks to himself. "All right, Number 8, it's the punishment room for you! Let's see if three days in there will cool your head!" Blight's lips relax into a smile when he hears the order. Don't these guys get it? Now my scenery will change.
Time will start flowing again. I'm grateful for that. Blight laughs aloud. Ignorant fools, this old man still has it.The guards tie his hand behind him, put chains on his ankles, and start for the punishment room."What the hell are you laughing at, Number 8?""Yeah, stop it! We'll punish you even more!" Blight just keeps on laughing; laughing at the top of his lungs while getting on their nerves. If I fill my lungs with all fresh air, will the stench disappear?
Or have my body and mind rotted so much already that I can't get rid of the stench so easily? How long will they keep me locked up in here?When can I get out of here? Will it be too late by then? When everything has rotted away, will I become less a "him" than an "it," the way I count victim corpses? Blight can hardly breathe. It is as though the air is being squeezed out of his chest and the excruciating pain of it is drawing him back from the world of dreams to reality.
Was I once in a prison in the far, far distant past? He half-wanders in the space between dream and reality. He has had this dream any number of times—this nightmare. It might even be called. After waking, he sought to recall it, but nothing stays in his memory. One thing is assured, however: the appearance of the jail and of the guards in the dream is always the same. Could this be something I have actually experienced?
If so, when could it have been? There is no way for him to tell. Blight wonders, how much of this memory, is truly a memory? Was this old man truly an assassin? The memory becomes fuzzy from here on out. Merely fragments. Blight wonders, how did he get out of that situation? One of the fragment memories come to mind, the old man of himself, being beheaded. “Oh. I guess I didn’t.”
Experiment memories 23
"I'll be gone soon," Sarah says. "So it makes no difference-a life like this." She smiles with effort, puts a gray tablet on her tongue, and swallows it. Use or possession of this drug by ordinary people is forbidden by law and strictly controlled. The person taking it feels as if every bone in his or her body is melting.
All the anxieties and cares of life vanish as the individual wanders in the space between languor and pleasure. "Why don't you take one, too?" Sarah pulls another tablet from her leather pouch and holds it out to Blight, who is standing by her bed. "Coward!" she says with a grim smile when he shakes his head in silence, and then she places the second tablet on her tongue.
"How many pills does that make today?" Blight asks. "Hmm, I forget . . ." With empty eyes, Sarah stares into space and sighs. Her eyes are fixed in time and space that unknown to Blight. This is an addiction-a serious one. "How are you feeling?" He asks. "Not bad," she says. "Very happy." She provides him with a smile. It is deeper and softer than her earlier smile-though maybe too intense and too soft.
It appears to be a smile of ultimate bliss, but, for that very reason, it also has a frightening quality that sends chills up his spine. The drug is called "marker." This is not its formal designation, of course. People started calling it that as a secret code word to avoid prosecution, and the term caught on. "Marker" is, however, the single most appropriate name for this drug. Each pill takes the user one step farther down the road.
And when withdrawal symptoms strikes, the person rushes to take the next pill, thereby advancing yet another step. Farther and farther and farther . . . The road marked by this marker is a soothing one, entirely free of pain or suffering. At the end of the road, however, there waits only death. The use and possession of marker is so strictly prohibited because it is seen as an invitation to gradual suicide.
"How many more pills, I wonder?" Sarah mutters, stretching her emaciated body full length on the bed. It is a question that Blight cannot answer. He knows only that she is nearing the end of her marker journey. It is for this that Blight has been called to this hospital, which is a facility for people on the verge of death, a caregiver who get hired for various jobs such as this.
"I have absolutely no regrets," Sarah says. "None at all. This way I die pleasantly, quietly, like going to sleep." Her vacant eyes are fixed on Blight, but they seem to register nothing. "I'll be fine." She reaches into the leather pouch again. "You probably shouldn't do that," Blight says. "I'm telling you, I'm fine," she says, laughing weakly, and placing a third marker in her mouth. She closes her eyes.
Her sunken eye sockets harbors dark shadows. Blight settles himself into the chair by her bed. He waits for her to say more, but she appears to have fallen asleep. Her breathing is calm, and a slight smile plays upon her sleeping face. The marker appears to be working. Without the drug, hammer-like pains in her back and violent chills would prevent her sleeping. Even worse than the physical suffering would be the fear of approaching death. More a girl than a woman, young Sarah was struck by a mortal illness.
At the end of her long battle with the disease, the doctor gave up all hope of treating it and prescribed marker for her instead. Ordinary people are not allowed to use the drug, but special permission has been given to patients for whom there is no hope of recovery in order to afford them a peaceful death and bring their lives to a quiet close-in other words, to enable them to die without having a deal with a regret or despair. Before Blight began this work, a doctor explained the effects of the medicine to him, concluding with a smile, "In other words, marker forgives all the debts the person has built up toward life."
Sarah wakens. After she has confirmed Blight's presence at her bedside, she says. "You do not need to worry," and closes her eyes again, smiling. "I'm fine. I think I can go just like this . . ." So, she knows there are additional possibilities. In certain rare cases, marker can have undesirable side-effects. Sometimes at the very end, when the person is beginning to slide into the abyss of death, there can be an attack of nightmares.
The patient experiences a literal death agony. Even though marker has provided such a wonderfully tranquil departure on the person's final journey, every bit of tranquility can be swept away on the cusp of death. Worse still, some patients concluded their hallucinatory episode with a frenzied physical outburst. They might have barely enough strength to breathe until, tormented by the nightmares.
They lash out violently enough to break the bed or even strangle the caregiver in attendance. Such can be the mysteries of the human body, or, more so, the human heart. This is why Blight is here. He goes to stand vigil by Sarah's deathbed against the remote possibility that she might be tormented by nightmares and go wild under the influence of marker's side-effects. The doctor has supplied him with yet another drug. It is a poison that will kill the patient instantaneously. Blight has been instructed to administer it to Sarah as soon as she starts to exhibit strange behavior.
"Believe me, this a humane measure," the doctor said, "not murder by any means. The face of a patient who has suffered the drug's side-effects is truly grotesque-not something that anyone could bear to look at. A person's death should never be that excruciating. This is a final kindness to give the person a quiet, peaceful ending." Blight was not totally convinced by the doctor's rationale. Neither, however, was he able to put himself to take issue with it.
Now he can only hope that, led by her marker, Sarah will be able to pass her final moments in peace. Some part of her inner self might be paralyzed now, and her hollow eyes might never regain their former gleam, but if she is happy that way, it is nothing that anyone has the right to deny her. Waking again, Sarah reaches for another marker but drops the leather pouch. "Sorry, but . . . would you pick it up for me?" she asks Blight.
She no longer has the strength even to hold the pouch. Her final moments are closing in. Blight lifts the pouch from the floor, but when she tells him to put a tablet in her mouth, he hesitates for a moment before complying. Her tongue is dry and rough as sandpaper. She really must be nearing the end. Having taken another marker, Sarah appears to have overtaken by that languorous feeling again. She moves the flesh of her cheeks in a way that has no meaning, releases a feeble sigh, and says, "I was just dreaming."
"What about?" "About when I was little . . . Everybody was there . . . My father, my mother, my big brother and sister . . . all smiling." This is not a good sign. The drug might be having a severe effect. If the marker is working properly, she should not be dreaming-especially about her family. The lingering attachment, regret, or sadness a person retains, the more likely he or she is to experience side effects.
This is precisely why the family is never admitted to the patient's room. The final farewells are made before the administering of marker, and only after everything is finished do they "meet" again. "Everybody was in such a good mood!" Blight wonders if he should give her another marker. "I'm sure when I was born that my parents never imagined I would die so young."
A more seasoned caregiver would probably give her another pill without hesitation. Then Sarah would fall into another peaceful sleep without any thoughts to disturb her, perhaps never to wake again. Blight, however, sets the leather pouch on a shelf and waits to hear what else she has to say. Sarah herself does not request another marker but moves the sunken flesh of her cheeks again.
This time the movement takes the form of a deliberate smile. "You know," she says to Blight, "I'm beginning to wonder." "About what?" "Why I was ever born." Blight is at loss for words, but she does not allow this prevent her from continuing. "I mean, if I'm going to die so young, when I’ve never had a chance to fall in love, wouldn't it have been better if I’d never been born at all?"
Blight nods as if to say to her that he understands. Why was I ever born? This is the question that Blight himself has been pondering all through his endless journey. He has still not found the answer, and probably never will. "My mother and father will be sad, I'm sure."
"You had better rest now." "Maybe I was born to make my parents sad." "Close your eyes and take a few long, deep breathes."
"Can I have some more medicine?" This time he gives it to her without hesitation. "Thank you," she says simply for the first time, and then closes her eyes. "I guess it's possible I might never wake up again."
"It's possible." "It's a good thing to die without suffering, isn't it?"
"It probably is." "And to die with your head in a fog, without thinking or feeling anything . . . that's a good thing, too, isn't it?" Blight says nothing. This is a question he cannot answer, a question he doesn't want to answer. Sarah falls asleep without asking him anything else.
She is still sound asleep when the doctor examines her and tells Blight, "She will probably pass away before the night is out." It is late that night-close to dawn-when Sarah begins to suffer. "I'm sorry, Mommy, I'm sorry I ate the jam. It was me." She is running a high fever with large drops of sweat on her forehead as she moans deliriously. "What's taking you so long, Daddy? Hurry, hurry, the butterfly's going to fly away!"
Blight wonders if she could be reliving memories of early childhood. "You hit me! Big brothers should not hit their little sisters! You are bad! I'm gonna tell Mommy!" Convulsions wrack her entire body. "Let me in! I want to play with the big girls!" It doesn't end with her delirium. She starts moving her arms as if trying to embrace family members floating around her.
This is what they were afraid of: the side-effects. "Take me with you, please! I don't want to stay here! Don't leave me!" Her cries mingle with tears. Hallucinations seem to have taken the place of past memories in her empty eyes. "Please, I'll be good! I'll do what you tell me, Mommy and Daddy! Take me with you!" In fact, just the opposite is happening: the ones being left behind are the family who so loved their youngest daughter, Sarah.
"Don't leave me alone! Mommy! Daddy! Come back, please!" He can feel her pain and sorrow. Her convulsions become increasingly violent. Her face contorts in agony. Alerted by the commotion, a doctor comes charging into the room. "What are you doing?" he shouts at Blight, "Put her out of her misery now!" Blight knows what he should do. This is what he was hired for. The poison that will prevent Sarah from suffering any more is within easy reach.
What he takes hold of, softly, however, is not the poison but the hands that Sarah stretches out into empty space. "What are you doing?" the doctor shouts at him. "Stop it! This is a direct violation of your duties! You're fired!" Blight turns toward the fuming doctor and says simply, "Be quiet, please." "What in the hell are you-" But the doctor breaks of his shouting when he catches sight of the look on Sarah's face.
She is smiling. "Are these my mother's hands? My father's? Big brother's? Big sister's? Tell me whose hands are these?" she asks joyfully. Feeling the strength of Blight's grasp, she squeezes back, an almost indescribably happy smile on her face, tears streaming from her eyes. "I'm here with all of you . . . together . . . always . . ."
Her convulsions have subsided, and her breathing has calmed down. Blight whispers in her ear, "Thank you, Sarah." "Daddy?" Smiling through her tears, she says, "I know it's you!" Blight smiles back at her and says, "I'm speaking for all of us-for me, your mother, your brother, your sister, when I say 'Thank you, Sarah.'" Sarah seems almost embarrassed when she asks, "For what?" "For having been born, Sarah. For having come to be with us. For having allowed us to share time with you. Mommy and I and Brother and Sister, we're all so grateful to you for that." Unfortunately, life has its limits. There are long lives and short lives. And in life-even more unfortunately-there is happiness and unhappiness.
There are happy lives and unhappy lives. For all of this, however, for the chance to be alive in this world, for the chance of having lived life in this world, the only thing to say is "Thank you." When Blight says this to her, Sarah gives her slender chin a little shake and says,
"No, I should be the one to be thanking you-all of you!" These are Sarah's last words. The look on her face in death following the torment of the drug-induced nightmares is neither tranquil nor peaceful. It is, however, happy.
Are you really leaving us?" the doctor asks Blight with a genuine show of regret. Dressed for the road, Blight smiles and says, "I don't think I’ll be ever able to perform the duties of a caregiver properly." "To tell you the truth, Blight, I still can't get over the fact that it's even possible to do it your way." With a serious look, he adds, "I wonder if your hands give off some substance like marker. Otherwise, I can't imagine how she could have died so happily." Blight turns his palms toward the doctor. "They're just ordinary hands, nothing special."
"I'm not so sure about that," the doctor says. "If we spent some time studying them properly, maybe . . ." Blight shakes his head with a sour smile as if to say, "You wouldn't find a thing." He does have one point to make with the doctor: "I've seen lots of people die alone-probably not much as you but I have enough. That's why I wanted to bring her together with her family at the end. That's the only reason I took her hands." The doctor's vague nod suggests that he is not convinced, but Blight is through talking with him.
He strides off toward the highway. He must continue his journey. His journey will go on as long as he is unable to reply to Sarah's question. Why was I ever born? Sarah had a family at least. Her life consisted of her joining and leaving her family. Blight has not had even that much. Where did I come from? Where am I going? Why does the passing wind draw Blight along on his endless journey? A journey without any markers or arrows to tell him where to go. This is why Blight is always free-and always alone as he continues on, as a caregiver. However, the memories end. What is left is merely fragments, fragments that he cannot make sense of. The end of this person, this caregiver journey without a marker or signpost.
::Personality::
Blight is define by his confidence, logic, and exceptional decision-making, but all of this hides a turbulent underbelly – his emotions. The very notion of emotional expression is synonymous with irrationality and weakness to blight, a display of poor self-governance and fleeting opinion that can hardly stand up to the enduring light of factual truth. This mistrust of emotions is understandable, as Feelings is the most weakly developed trait for Blight – like any complex tool, skilled hands can use it to remarkable effect, while untrained hands make clumsy and dangerous work.
Blight take pride in remaining rational and logical at all times, considering honesty and straightforward information to be paramount to euphemisms and platitudes in almost all circumstances. In many ways though, these qualities of coolness and detachment aren't the weapons of truth that they appear to be, but are instead shields designed to protect the inner emotions Blight feel.
In fact, because this emotions are such an underdeveloped tool, Blight often feel them more strongly than many overtly emotional types because he simply haven't learned how to control them effectively. This is a challenging paradigm for Blight to manage. These feelings are contrary to Blight idea of himself as paragons of logic and knowledge, and he may go so far as to claim he has no emotions at all. This does not mean that be should be seen as, nor should he aspire to be, cold-blooded and insensitive geniuses living by the mantra that emotions are for the weak.
More mature and Assertive Blight becomes, he find more useful ways to manage his feelings. While he will never be comfortable with a truly public display of emotions, he can learn to use them, to channel them alongside his logic to help him achieve his goals. Blight pride himself on his minds, taking every opportunity to improve his knowledge, and this shows in the strength and flexibility of his strategic thinking.
Insatiably curious and always up for an intellectual challenge, Blight can see things from many perspectives. Blight uses his creativity and imagination not so much for artistry, but for planning contingencies and courses of action for all possible scenarios. Blight trusts his rationalism above all else, so when they conclude, he has no reason to doubt his findings. This creates an honest, direct style of communication that isn't held back by perceived social roles or expectations.
When Blight right, they're right, and no amount of politicking or hand-holding is going to change that fact – whether it's correcting a person, a process, or themselves, he'd have it no other way. This creativity, logic and confidence come together to form Blight who stand on his own and take responsibility for his own actions. Authority figures do not impress him, nor do social conventions or tradition, and no matter how popular something is, if he have a better idea, Blight will stand against anyone he has to in a bid to have it changed.
Either an idea is the most rational or it's wrong, and Blight will apply this to his arguments as well as his own behavior, staying calm and detached from these sometimes emotionally charged conflicts. Blight will only be swayed by those who follow suit. Blight perfectly capable of carrying his confidence too far, falsely believing that he’s resolved all the pertinent issues of a matter, and closing himself off to the opinions of those he believe to be intellectually inferior.
Combined with his irreverence for social conventions, Blight can be brutally insensitive in making his opinions of others all too clear. Blight tend to have complete confidence in his thought process, because rational arguments are almost by definition correct – at least in theory.
In practice, emotional considerations and history are hugely influential, and a weak point for Blight is that he brand these factors and those who embrace them as illogical, dismissing them and considering his proponents to be stuck in some baser mode of thought, making it all but impossible to be heard. This antipathy to rules and tendency to over-analyze and be judgmental, even arrogant, all adds up to Blight that is often clueless in dating. Having a new relationship last long enough for Blight to apply the full force of his analysis on his potential partner's thought processes and behaviors can be challenging.
Trying harder in the ways that Blight know best can only make things worse, and it's unfortunately common for him to simply give up the search. Ironically, this is when Blight at his best, and most likely to attract a partner. Rules, limitations and traditions are anathema to Blight – everything should be open to questioning and reevaluation, and if he see a way, he will often act unilaterally to enact his technically superior, sometimes insensitive, and almost always unorthodox methods and ideas. This isn’t to be misunderstood as impulsiveness – his will strive to remain rational no matter how attractive the end goal may be, and every idea, whether generated internally or soaked in from the outside world, must pass the ruthless and ever-present “Is this going to work?” filter.
This mechanism is applied at all times, to all things and all people, and this is often where he runs into trouble. Blight defined by his tendency to move through life as though it were a giant chess board, pieces constantly shifting with consideration and intelligence, always assessing new tactics, strategies and contingency plans, constantly outmaneuvering his peers in order to maintain control of a situation while maximizing their freedom to move about. This isn’t meant to suggest that Blight act without conscience.
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