Eye Of the Beholder

**Written for the "Physical Emotions" contest.*



"I am what you have made of me, and the mad dog devil killer fiend leper is a reflection of your society."
-Charles Manson-

Led and left along the edge of the world, where such fixed creatures are poised and animate upon the twist and twirl dance of a pen-- muddled within the dark suspension of a single room, thickened shades and silhouettes left by the dull haze of all these wants, lusts and addictions which keep them fed.

"This eye looks with love,
this eye looks with judgement,
free me take the sight out
from this eye"...

"Daffy is listening to his moody cunt muszak again," Old Charlie sat at the counter, nursing upon the rules of smooth bourbon and the fixture of an only too attainable promised land.

"The heart is ritualistic," Lucy, short form of Lucifer as Daffy was, for Old Charlie, an easier bend to make on the tongue than his normal not-so affectionate pet name for the young man, Daffodils. "for the most part leastwise."

"Or just someone who needs to get laid," Angel Talon chimed in from where she sat, laughing madly at the old black and white movie.

"Spoken like a true slut," Old Charlie grumbled before finishing this round, and heading directly into the next without a pause.

"You know what they say, a good woman may be hard to find, but it is usually the bad girl that you remember once you do." Lucy smirked, as Angel cackled and Charlie grumbled to himself. Daffy had never heard a word than any of them had said, as he stared out the window to watch the sun go down, and he was left behind to another chill January night.

"Who in the hell actually says that?" Old Charlie's ire rose, as if he had missed a beat somewhere and only caught up once the fire had scorched across the back of his throat. "Fuck it all, if that isn't at least a fair common symptom of what is wrong with the world today. You might just as well all get a room and screw yourselves blind, for all I care about it all anymore."

"Poor Charlie, never fear, for perhaps tomorrow the sun shall rise again, just for you." Lucy smirked as Angel lit a joint, and nearly spit it out once the comment had seeped through the desire of a moment.

"One night the howlin' dog sings a lullaby
Drift you onto peaceful memories.
One night the howlin' dog cries out of a lonely life,
Breaks you like the light between the trees"

"Where in the hell is Little D?" Charlie asked, and Lucy shrugged as Charlie glanced around the room. Sometimes called Little Devil, more often Little Dio; a soft and affectionate term for a small god. While often neglected, the autistic boy was left virtually senseless to all those around him, save that some one of this soft collect should come to pass upon a fork or a crossroad. He was kind of like a good luck charm in that, as they would take his hand; and while leaving it empty, it became filled with those things that would never be. These things became the child's possessions, like a psycho-emotional compass that continually kept looking back. As far as any of the others knew, he did not dream or want. He never grew any older, and he never changed.

Little D was the only true absolute in the room.

"Perhaps he is playing with your manhood," Lucy rolled his tongue against the side of his cheek, as Angel coughed out her hit in a fit of angry laughter and Old Charlie just rolled his eyes as he continued to drink.

"Fucking deviants, the whole lot of ya." Charlie muttered as the warm muddle began to set in. Sleep didn't seem so far away anymore, as the dreaming slowly began as his thoughts began to divert from all, and everyone in the room. The fear that he would not remember was greater than the fear that he mightn't wake again, as irritated as he was with the all, and everyone in the room. He knew that he probably might miss them, at least a few of them anyways. He was not convinced that any of them would ever miss him.

"Ah, but we still luv ya Charlie," Angel said as she got up from the couch, and moved across the living room. "Perhaps if you tried this, you wouldn't be such an ass all of the time." Angel draped herself over his shoulders and held the half-spent joint under his nose.

"And they say sacrifice
Is letting sweet love go"

"Why don't you all go pestering at Daffy over there. He could use a change of mood, and maybe we might get to hear some happy love-fuck muszak." Old Charlie said irritatedly, both Lucy and Angel busting out laughing at that.

"Keep on drinking Pops, I am beginning to like you more better." Lucy continued chuckling as all turned their attention to the young man, who was still turned out the window, long after the sun had gone down. "Maybe you should try giving him a few toots off that Toots," Lucy's mirth disappeared into a residual trace of something other than happiness. "The kid is starting to become an annoying cliche."

"Umm, no." Angel said as she took a seat up next to Charlie at the counter. "He may come under the delusion that I actually give a shit, and then I will have to stab him in chest."

"Aren't we sweet." Lucy smirked.

"It's how you're supposed to kill a vampire. Am I right or wrong?" Angel said, as she held in her hit. "Next thing you know, he'll be wanting to hang out all of the time, wear the same clothes and try very hard to like the same things-- Besides, I am a more than a tad worried that I may break him."

"And that is your definition of unbroken?" Lucy's brow raised after nodding toward the young man.

"It is sad, and it does kind of make me want to fuck him; but no good deed ever goes unpunished." Angel said, poising her index and middle fingers at the side of her throat.

"Do you all remember that first gal he was with? Damn near made me puke a little in my own mouth every time he opened his." Old Charlie cackled, and Lucy grinned.

"So, what was it like with your first love, Old Timer?" Lucy asked.

"Em, pretty much the same I s'pose. I lost my damn mind." Old Charlie shrugged. "My mush didn't get all gooey o'er everyone within earshot of just about everything I would say, but I still sometimes kind of miss the me that was whenever she was around."

"So, what happened next Poppy?" Charlie was not even aware that Angle was still listening, as she had turned around and started chuckling at the television set again.

"Weren't you ever in love?" Charlie asked her directly, and she paused and then shrugged. "You probably have a pretty decent sense of your own what happened next, if not the particulars about it. Same thing that ended up happening with every love that ever came Daffy, o'er there, e'er came across. Whoops, reality pop. Whether the relationship actually e'er ends or not, what you come to expect really doesn't exist. Unalike dreamy-boy over there, you kind of have to adjust your vision to what it really means, and move on."

"So, what does it really mean Pops," Lucy cut himself back into the conversation. "Lay it on us, give us some of the pearls of your time and wisdom."

"Well, it sure as hell don't mean what you mean whenever someone manages to actually get your attention," Old Charlie responded, somewhat coldly, but mostly in a tone as to scold some of the disrespect from his tone. "I just made my expectations a little easier for a living, breathing human being to actually live up to is all."

"Love just seems to roll over and go to sleep, once you give it what it wants." Angel said as she laid the butt of the joint in the ashtray, and then lit up a cigarette. "Once you already know what is coming, or not coming..." She rolled her eyes and then smiled as she laid her chin against her arms that she had folded over the counter.

"There's got to be a punchline in there somewhere Baby." Lucy rolled his hands forward, prodding her on. "I know you too well to just let it hang there."

"Kind of like the old Rolling Stones tune about not getting what you want, but still maybe getting what you need." She shrugged.

"Both answers are so totally wrong, and so unimaginatively conceived, that I barely wonder that I speak to either of you for any longer than it takes me to catch my own breath." Lucy threw up his hands and spun around in the stool.

"Ho-boy, here it comes now," Old Charlie nudged his elbow against Angel. "The philosophies of the heart, by Mr. Arry Gant Prick." Old Charlie grabbed the bottle and poured the last of its contents into the glass. "Alright, now I am just about ready to hear this, which is as good as it is ever likely to get-- so let's hear it."

"Passion is the frantic dance of the heart, excited by sensualese and an orgasmic expression--which merely suggests that something has actually been completed. Love is something else altogether."

"Which is why you are such a happy man," Old Charlie said after a pause, as if trying to figure out what in the hell he was even talking about. But he really wasn't, not at all.

"A content one," Lucy shrugged. "Young Werther, over there by the window, awaits his one and only true soul mate; and the girl that will change his life forever. What bitter disappointment, he must always encounter, once he realizes that he had never truly been changed at all."

"It's romantic," Angel felt strange, even making an argument for Daffy.

"It overwhelms those unique qualities of everyone that you may chance to meet. It is like traveling, and getting lost is really the only way that you will ever be able to discover something that you had never imagined before you see it for yourself."

"I think I am cutting myself off," Old Charlie said, as he stared down toward the shot glass. "Shithead is beginning to make some kind of sense to me."

"Yeah-really," Angel agreed, only half-committed to comment that she had made. "Go on, Loose."

"For most, your true first love is nearly perfect, for it wants nothing more of you than to discover who you truly are. A mother's heart can be broken, but it can never truly turn against you. It wishes and dreams of and for you. It feeds and protects you. And, if for one moment, once you are grown, that you expect to replace it, you are a fool from the start." Lucifer said, and then raised one long slender finger. "From my first love, I learned how to dance. From the next, poetry and art. From the next, what throes of passion, that we were like mere actors to a script for which neither of us knew what we might say or do next. From another, I learned responsibility and compassion, and after her--decadence and the thrill of pain, and release. I learned business, and the indelicate art of finance, as we rose and fell, but generally grew more together until..." Lucy shrugged again. "Tell me Charlie, have you ever seen a young and beautiful naked woman play the piano?"

"No, but I am fair certain that I could find some of her pictures on the internet." He chuckled.

"Devoid of sound, motion, and most of all connection, it would be pointless... Well, mostly pointless I suspect." Lucy amended, with a bit of a sly grin.

"So h'okay there Don Juan, granted that I give you that." Angel sat up, as her eyes grew dull and almost sleepy. "Are you suggesting that ugly, fat chicks can't play a piano?" Angel's voice became more terse. "Or yet that, when your tender young foppit begins to swell and sag, are you going to suggest that her music becomes any less passionate. Yeah, I've got your number pal," she said, now actively angry and a little disgusted. "That isn't love Babydoll, that is merely another pretty picture of your dick, hanging there." She lowered her voice, as if she were trying to imitate what he had said himself earlier in the conversation. "Fucking dodger. You might should have stuck around a bit with that chick peddling responsibility and compassion, because I'm pretty damn sure you still have some shit to learn from her."

"And what about you then?" Lucy snarled.

"What about me?"

"Kind of like the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn't you say? Another conquest, every night, pretending that it might matter when you already have a preconceived notion in your head..."

"I'm pretty sure we are still talking about love, which is not really what I do, every night." Angel aped a low and dull tone that was not really present in Lucy's voice at all. "I fuck, there's a difference. I would tell you just how aware of that difference I am, but I am not sure that you would really notice that anything might matter, from just another night where I was not so much disappointed, as kind of relieved."

"Are you saying that you don't screw guys that you might have a chance of falling in love with," Old Charlie asked.

"This may shock and appall you both, but I have had several dates where it didn't start and end in the sack," Angel stood up and moved back to her seat on the sofa. "If I interrupt what someone to say, let's just fuck and get it over with? That is not a very good potent that my heart may be getting involved."

"Yeah," Old Charlie fought back a chuckle as he noticed that Lucy was still sulking, before his eye moved over toward the kid, that was still just sitting there, staring out of the window into the dark of night.

"All I can hope for is a light to see
When I search in the dark for my soul
And when my soul comes to rescue me
I rest my resistance fall piece by piece...
into peace"  

"Now I know that it is getting to be time for bed," Old Charlie picked himself up from the stool and stretched. "I am beginning to kind of like moody cunt muszak." Charlie chuckled as Angel rolled her eyes, but followed it with a smirk of her own.

"Good night Charlie," she said.

"Yeah, sleep well Old Boy." Lucy kicked in his two cents, as his own eye drew over toward Daffy.

"This eye looks with love
This eye looks with judgment;
Free me take the sight out of this eye...
Free me take the sight out of this eye."

**Lyrics By Edie Brickell**

*Though this seems to pointed to a singular emotion, the subject of this conversation is more of a distraction from the premise of this contest. I gave them all names and personalities, but they are all nothing more than complicated forms of much simpler emotions

Uley*