Loveless: Chapter One

For a man, he was extremely graceful; floating around knives and arrows like there was nothing there to begin with. His body morphed and squeezed in to almost unimaginable poses to dodge the sharp points that were threatening to painfully caress his skin and leave dark scarlet marks. The bending and stretching seemed to take no toll on him; no strained expression appeared on his face, nor any strenuous grunts from his mouth. For him, this was religion. Meditation and peacefulness engulfed him as his limbs narrowly dodged sharp points and ragged edges. He smiled to himself at the thought of this. The whole point of his performance in the circus was to dodge the weapons as they were thrown at him, and it was easily done every time. But when the show wasn’t going on he would take liberties. “Accidentally” let his guard down and slip himself across a sharp dagger or claymore and take a few simple seconds to take in the sickly-sweet sight of blood running down from the wound. The best part was that he didn’t have to explain the scars to many, as they assumed it was a hazard associated with his choice in career, so he could take as many “accidents” as he wanted without raising much suspicion. As he started to feel the stalking weariness any exercise would bring after hours of continuous strain, he dipped lower than usual and a dagger that was mounted on a post caught the skin of his right shoulder. He dragged it along for a few inches then straightened himself and climbed out of the deadly maze of blades. He let the blood run down his arm as he sat down on half a log resting on the ground near the haphazard pile of weapons. Under the shade of the circus practice tent, it was about ten degrees colder than the chilly weather outside, but he didn’t mind. Sweat mixed in with the blood from his newest cut and he wiped the moisture off of his young face. He stared down at the laceration on his shoulder, not smiling, but harboring a pleasant feeling of biting, vexatious distraction. The color and sting of the wound took his mind off of the deep depression that haunted his mind - like an unholy apparition would haunt a widow’s bedroom. He had many friends to distract him; knives, pins, drinks, drugs. Drugs like chakai, a bag of which was sitting next to the man. He glanced down at it and picked the bag up. In the faint red glow of the coming sunset, the black powder glistened like ebony diamonds. Sighing, he threw the bag down in to his personal sack. He didn’t know who’s chakai it was, but since they were ignorant enough to leave it there, it was his now. You took what you found in this place, everyone knew that. He glanced again at the cut on his arm and finally took a white towel to it, dabbing up the blood, not wincing at the sharp sting of pressure against the wound. Standing up, he decided to finally give up and admit that he didn’t have a clue what to do for the rest of the night. So he walked towards the entrance of the tent, his vision starting to blur. As he dragged his sack along, he hoped there was good booze nearby.