Dark Waltz

[Umshaes]

“It’d be easy to just fall right now. Wouldn’t it?”

Umshaes stood with Aynur atop a stone bridge, beyond the safety of the cobbled rails. They stood precariously upon a crumbling edge. The slightest misstep and they’d fall into the raging waters and be dragged under, never to be seen again, at least alive.

A gust of wind picked up and blew back his raven hair, splattering his face with bitter cold water droplets carried in the turbulent winds. Umshaes felt alive, he could feel his heart thrum hard against his chest fuelled by the rush of the unknown. His face bristled with an icy chill and the afternoon sun hit his back with a heated warmth. A grin crept upon his pale face as he turned his bi-coloured gaze to Aynur, who still wasn’t entirely aware of her surroundings. Doped up out of her little mind. He wondered if she had heard his question. She stared listlessly beyond, unseeing milky eyes focused on nothing but the darkness that she was ever shrouded in. Her lips parted and she spoke softly, barely audible over the rumbling from below. "Before you, I was ready to die. A part of me still…” She trailed off.

Umshaes half expected her to jump then and there, it’d be an anticlimactic end to her miserable life, but it’d be a graceful one. To see her pale form draped in a white summer dress tumbling down. All it would need is the mournful plea of a lover to signal the final curtain call.

Unfortunately, she exhaled slowly and leant back and away from the edge, her tiny fingers fumbling behind to grip the sides of the stone wall behind her tight. It was the opposite of a finale, it was a lagging attempt to cling to her little sob story of a play.

He frowned.

How utterly pathetic. “You know-” He reached out and pushed her, Aynur gave a startled yelp but before she could tumble below Umshaes caught her hand. The two hung precariously over the edge of the bridge, Umshaes malformed and blackened grip the only thing between them, and the even blacker grip of death.

“W-What are you doing!?” She cried out as she gripped him tightly, her voice rising in hysteric panic. “P-Pull me up! Damien! DAMIEN!”

Umshaes felt both sickened and elated at her reaction. “You’re such a filthy liar.” He spat. “If you were so accepting of death, and ready to die you’d let go of me. You’d be washed away into obscurity, you’d have died with some sort of dignity. Instead-” His lips turned down into a disgusted frown. “You’re clinging pathetically to a miserable existence.” Umshaes shook his arm and she screamed again, turning her body to claw at him.

Umshaes hung there, tempted to shrug her off. To watch her fall. Many times during the past few days he had been tempted to rid himself of her. Yet he found her so easily to manipulate, throughout everything, she was still so woefully trusting. The man heavily sighed and pulled her forcefully back onto the tiny ledge. He helped her back over the safety of the rails before hopping over himself.

She had crumpled to a heap on the floor, shivering. “P-please don’t do that again...please… please Damien…”

It seemed like the adrenaline shook the sedation of his drug, she’d be a little more difficult to deal with. “Now, now. What did I just prove to you?”


“I-I-I don’t know....” She spoke between heaving sobs.

He snorted. “That you clearly, are not ready to die. Little Aynur.”

Umshaes reached into his jacket, pulling out a small pipe and tin. He began to pack it with a purple colored herb. The same thing he used to sedate her, and the same thing he used to quell the voices in his head, and the constant ebb of his headaches.

“Question is…” He paused as he lit the pipe then threw the match carelessly behind him. Umshaes took a long drag of his pipe and knelt down. He roughly grabbed her face with his blackened hand and tilted it up toward him so he could blow the thick, perfumed plume into her face.

“What to do with that knowledge? Will you continue a pitiful existence, or will you throw yourself into the unknown?”

She coughed and tried to wrench her face free from his grip, it egged Umshaes on. He gave her a predatory grin as he held her fast, inhaling then exhaling more of the smoke into her face. “Don’t you feel that Aynur? Don’t you feel your heart beating hard against your chest? Don’t you feel so… very… alive?”

Umshaes shoved her face away, taking another long drag of his pipe. He didn't care to hear her reply. He just wanted to shut her up.