Despair’s realm is metallic and rank, like stacks of decaying newspapers and the old rot of swollen wood. As Desire moves through its heavy mist, the moist, redolent air seems to part for her. It slides away from her glowing white body in its pale grey suit as if intimidated by her perfection. Her presence makes it frighteningly aware of its own unworthiness, as Desire is usually inclined to do.
She studies the haunted faces that line her sister’s gloomy hallways as they distort and warp with grief; each individual is gaunt and hollowed by their own self-destruction. She watches their twisted, miserable expressions and is faintly amused. Despair says: “He has remained too long at the borders of my realm, brother-sister. He will not come.”
Her voice is a thin, wavering rattle in her ancient throat. Broken teeth scrape against one another inside of her blackened mouth as she talks and rakes her barbed sigil down the length of her face. The incised skin blossoms with pain, and it offers her a comforting familiarity. “He will go to our brother instead,” she adds. “To live in dreams rather than despair.”
When Desire leans down to cup the pocked side of her sister’s face, worlds collide. Feather-delicate fingers lovingly caress dead, bloated flesh and perfection meets decay. Desire’s coral pink lips smile without pause; her eyes sneer.
“Oh he will come,” she says with a frustrating certainty in her voice. “When was the last time I disappointed you, sweet sister; do not doubt. I have fashioned a muse, my love, my twin – one spun out of the very fabric of desire – and he will deliver this precious artist of yours into the very heart of your realm.”
Despair watches as her twin walks the murky, mirrored spaces of her gallery. When Desire’s slender, graced silhouette moves past the sharp, bleak reflections caught in the dingy glass, the children of Despair feel the momentary sting of passion. It blooms suddenly and fiercely in their hungry, desirous stomachs. It is an indulgent, incendiary emotion that cannibalizes itself on contact, leaving nothing but an ink-black return to despair in its wake.
“So it will be,” Despair whispers, her watery eyes following after her sister’s quickly receding form, “and so it has always been.” The words are as final and bitter as ash upon her tongue.
