This is more of an experiment than anything else.
It's just a mish-mash of little scenes about different characters, all strung together with quotes from the book of Jude, which is the shortest in the bible, consisting of 26 verses in total, and comes after one of the Johns and before Revelations, in the New Testament.
I've forgotten which John.
The Book of Jude
---
And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
Jude walked in the eternal darkness that was his curse; there was nothing behind his irises but the eternal darkness of the abyss into which he had been thrown. He felt the world around him, almost see it, but no: that was his gift, and it was also his curse. Every day he would reach for the light, reaching for the sun and stare at it with empty eyes, and for the heat that stained down on his head and the flickering of energy that he felt with his soul. But he did not see it.
That was his curse; and the eternal darkness was cold and bleak.
"Jude," the voice spoke to him from the darkness.
The figure that stepped from the shadows he could sense, sense the curving of her figure and sense her skin and the clothing that she wore. He could taste the leather and the slight sweat that adorned her forehead from the heat of the sun, and smell the perfume that she wore lightly over the blandness of her orange scented shampoo. He smiled at her, even though he was facing away from her, and turned to face her.
"Hello Ruth," he replied to her.
She wouldn't hear him, but she would see the movements of his lips and sense the echoing of those lips inside her mind—his mind. She smiled, and held out her hand and clutched it gently with his own, but that was all that she could do. Jude knew that he didn't have to speak aloud when she was around, because she could sense every single thought that passed through his mind. That was her blessing, her wonderful blessing to make up for her loss of hearing. A blessing, they said when she told them.
And also her curse.
Her curse to know the deeds that others sought to do to her, some good and some bad, and sometimes the others that were not even worth mentioning; he couldn't sense Esther standing next to her, and he knew that Esther would wear the same leather jacket and use the same, orange scented shampoo laced lightly with their trademark perfume named bouquet of flowers. He looked up, and cocked his head to the side.
"How's Esther?" he asked.
Jude hadn't spoken to Ruth's twin since last time Ruth had come to visit him. Not that spoken was the correct word, for where Jude had no sight, and where Ruth had no hearing, Esther had the curse that was the worst of all. She, like her sister, could place the words she wanted into the minds of others, simulating the parts of the brain that took in the speech and entered it into the little database of the memory.
She could hear everything, though; and that was the final curse.
The birds that sang in the trees told her of their nests, and the seeds that they ate, while the cats told them of their children and their food and their owners; the dogs were loyal to their masters. But the worst was that she could hear every conversation that occurred within quite a distance; she would sit there, in a café, and while she drank her café latte, she would listen to the conversations that went on around her.
Seeming to be out of it, like she was on drugs; but she heard the horrors and the fairy-tales of life, the stories and the conversations that were told by those in the full capabilities of their minds, their voices, their eyesight and their hearing. Jude would have hated to have that ability, but he hated his ability to sense things probably more so than the hearing, and would have easily have swapped his gift and curse. They all hated their gifts, but without them, they would flounder and they would exist as no-one.
"She's well…" Ruth replied.
Ruth was seventeen, much like her sister, but that was to expected because the two were identical twins; Jude himself hailed in at sixteen years old, but he was tall than the other two: but he didn't know what he looked like. The others stayed away from him, they told stories and other, horrid things about what he could do but inside, he was no different from them. Or perhaps he was.
Because he'd never say such things. But he did; he said it about the ones that said it about him, and he supposed that he was no better than them, but he was human and so were they, so he forgave himself and let it pass.
The room wasn't really a room; "She's picking something up from Professor Ivy," continued Ruth; Jude liked it, even though it was just a small tree house that had been barely large enough to contain the trio when they had been thirteen—and twelve-when they had found it, and now, it was quite a feat for all of them to fit inside. The fact that they had extended it might have help, but they hadn't done that much.
"That's nice…" Jude replied absently, running his fingers of the desk.
I wonder what it looks like… he thought to himself.
"It's ugly." Shot back Ruth. "You honestly aren't missing out on much…"
"I know," he replied.
Know, echoed in Ruth's mind.
"Wouldn't you agree with me though, that I'd give anything just to see it, beauty or no beauty?"
Ruth remained silent.
The ladder rattled. "Sorry I'm late," Esther said. But it wasn't aloud, even though it felt like it was aloud and it was for Ruth, the only thing she would ever hear, it echoed in the recesses of their minds and simulated what they were hearing. She stepped into the room, identical to her sister in every way, with a smile on her face, because Jude could sense the clenching of the muscles of her lips.
"I got what I wanted from Ivy… and she asked me to deliver something," she pulled out a small box.
"Why haven't you?" Ruth asked.
It was a well-known fact that Esther was extremely reliable, one of the things where the identicalness between the two stopped, because Ruth was in the opposite direction. People had laughs over it, calling it Russian roulette, because you never knew if you'd get Ruth or not; chances were though, you might be able to tell them apart and get the right one. Ruth, however, couldn't even be trusted to give messages to people.
"She said I should bring you along… and it's on the other side of the island," Esther didn't sit down.
"I'm up for a walk," Ruth brightened up a bit.
Jude remained impartial, but he went with them anyway.
Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.
"Why, hello!" the Professor said as they stepped inside.
Esther remained silent, and Jude was busy touching things to talk, so Ruth smiled at him and kept his lips locked firmly in his mind, trying to catch his speech from his thoughts, but not his thoughts themselves. Sometimes she would succeed, but the other times, she didn't; it was a fifty-fifty chance. "Hello Professor," she replied, and handed over the small black box that Ivy had given them.
"Ah!" he replied, and he turned and Ruth's concentration was broken so she sighed, and stepped into his mind and tried to avoid the complicated thoughts about the fabric of the universe, pokemon, and fallen angels.
She didn't succeed. "What do you mean by fallen angels?" she asked, absent-mindedly.
Professor Seth started. "What was that?" he turned back to fact her.
"She asked about fallen angels," Jude was staring at a painting on the wall, trying to see it with his eyes but not succeeding; then Jude sighed and turned back around and joined in the conversation.
"I thought she might have…" Seth continued.
"I'm sorry to intrude on your thoughts," Ruth said, almost sincerely.
"Intrude?" came his voice again.
"It's a very long story," Esther muttered.
"I'll say…" Jude could feel the coldness of the metal desk under his hand.
"We're… gifted," Ruth went on to say.
"How so? As in, psychic?" Seth asked, but Esther shook her head.
"We're cursed, too; Jude is blind, I'm deaf, and Esther is mute. But I can read minds, and Jude can sense and feel energies and tastes, and Esther can hear for miles."
"Fascinating…" Seth muttered, and he reached into his desk and pulled out a small pouch. "This is all very strange, but makes a weird kind of sense…" he grinned happily, and opened the pouch and pulled out three, strange, coloured pokeballs. The first was the colour of the lightning storm with strains of silver and the wash of rain and the hail of ice and snow.
The second was the colour of the sun and the blinding heat that poured down from it and covered the earth, blended with the existences that it kept alive by it's heat. While the third was the colour of the moon, silvery, and mixed with the tides as the gravity of the moon caused their shifting. He smiled and put the empty pouch back on the desk, and seemed to weight them.
"There is a legend…" he began. "Of three chosen ones, with three gifts, and three curses."
Jude laughed. "I can see where this is going…"
Seth continued as if he hadn't heard them. "I disbelieved this legend, of course… until a young professor found these," he held up the three pokeballs, "and a tablet that ran in with the legend, and said that the three pokeballs, made from a substance totally unlike the pokeballs we use today, would carry three separate pokemon that exist nowhere else in the world."
"And then what?" Ruth asked. But she already knew.
"We go about doing great deeds, or some other bullshit like that," Esther said.
Seth smiled. "Something like that… you should take these though," he handed one to each of them. "Who knows? You might find them handy sometime…"
Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.
"Pokemon trainer, Jude Wright," the television went, "recently reached the top five, along with good friends Esther and Ruth Veil; the three are expected to battle each other head on, though the results are entirely uncertain…"
Jude changed the channel.
"Jude Wright uses a strange pokemon classed as Seiretora. Not much is known about this pokemon but…"
He changed the channel again.
"Esther Veil uses…"
He turned the television off and looked around the room.
What is is, Ju? the small, cat-like pokemon with wings on it's paws looked up at him.
"Nothing, Se," he replied.
It always is… Se went back to sleep.
"It's always so dark…" Jude sighed, and shook his head.
These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage.
The hospital room was dark, but much darker to Jude because he couldn't see anything; he could sense everything, and the sun that was hiding behind the clouds that were hiding behind the thick curtains, but he didn't really care for the sun any more. Ruth and Esther's pictures sat on the little table next to his bead: they were both dead, and he assumed that he was about to follow.
Se was gone too… it had all been so strange.
They had saved the world, apparently, but he didn't care for the world much any more. Seth had been the one to lead them to their 'saving', but Jude didn't know what had happened to him any more… the world lay in pieces, as if it were, and one side was today and the other side was yesterday; but not just with different time zones, because one couldn't pass to the other side.
Esther and Ruth were dead, though, and they had taken parts of him away with them.
He sighed aloud.
And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.
The machine was silent when the nurse walked into the room, and Jude breathed no longer.
It's just a mish-mash of little scenes about different characters, all strung together with quotes from the book of Jude, which is the shortest in the bible, consisting of 26 verses in total, and comes after one of the Johns and before Revelations, in the New Testament.
I've forgotten which John.
The Book of Jude
---
And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
Jude walked in the eternal darkness that was his curse; there was nothing behind his irises but the eternal darkness of the abyss into which he had been thrown. He felt the world around him, almost see it, but no: that was his gift, and it was also his curse. Every day he would reach for the light, reaching for the sun and stare at it with empty eyes, and for the heat that stained down on his head and the flickering of energy that he felt with his soul. But he did not see it.
That was his curse; and the eternal darkness was cold and bleak.
"Jude," the voice spoke to him from the darkness.
The figure that stepped from the shadows he could sense, sense the curving of her figure and sense her skin and the clothing that she wore. He could taste the leather and the slight sweat that adorned her forehead from the heat of the sun, and smell the perfume that she wore lightly over the blandness of her orange scented shampoo. He smiled at her, even though he was facing away from her, and turned to face her.
"Hello Ruth," he replied to her.
She wouldn't hear him, but she would see the movements of his lips and sense the echoing of those lips inside her mind—his mind. She smiled, and held out her hand and clutched it gently with his own, but that was all that she could do. Jude knew that he didn't have to speak aloud when she was around, because she could sense every single thought that passed through his mind. That was her blessing, her wonderful blessing to make up for her loss of hearing. A blessing, they said when she told them.
And also her curse.
Her curse to know the deeds that others sought to do to her, some good and some bad, and sometimes the others that were not even worth mentioning; he couldn't sense Esther standing next to her, and he knew that Esther would wear the same leather jacket and use the same, orange scented shampoo laced lightly with their trademark perfume named bouquet of flowers. He looked up, and cocked his head to the side.
"How's Esther?" he asked.
Jude hadn't spoken to Ruth's twin since last time Ruth had come to visit him. Not that spoken was the correct word, for where Jude had no sight, and where Ruth had no hearing, Esther had the curse that was the worst of all. She, like her sister, could place the words she wanted into the minds of others, simulating the parts of the brain that took in the speech and entered it into the little database of the memory.
She could hear everything, though; and that was the final curse.
The birds that sang in the trees told her of their nests, and the seeds that they ate, while the cats told them of their children and their food and their owners; the dogs were loyal to their masters. But the worst was that she could hear every conversation that occurred within quite a distance; she would sit there, in a café, and while she drank her café latte, she would listen to the conversations that went on around her.
Seeming to be out of it, like she was on drugs; but she heard the horrors and the fairy-tales of life, the stories and the conversations that were told by those in the full capabilities of their minds, their voices, their eyesight and their hearing. Jude would have hated to have that ability, but he hated his ability to sense things probably more so than the hearing, and would have easily have swapped his gift and curse. They all hated their gifts, but without them, they would flounder and they would exist as no-one.
"She's well…" Ruth replied.
Ruth was seventeen, much like her sister, but that was to expected because the two were identical twins; Jude himself hailed in at sixteen years old, but he was tall than the other two: but he didn't know what he looked like. The others stayed away from him, they told stories and other, horrid things about what he could do but inside, he was no different from them. Or perhaps he was.
Because he'd never say such things. But he did; he said it about the ones that said it about him, and he supposed that he was no better than them, but he was human and so were they, so he forgave himself and let it pass.
The room wasn't really a room; "She's picking something up from Professor Ivy," continued Ruth; Jude liked it, even though it was just a small tree house that had been barely large enough to contain the trio when they had been thirteen—and twelve-when they had found it, and now, it was quite a feat for all of them to fit inside. The fact that they had extended it might have help, but they hadn't done that much.
"That's nice…" Jude replied absently, running his fingers of the desk.
I wonder what it looks like… he thought to himself.
"It's ugly." Shot back Ruth. "You honestly aren't missing out on much…"
"I know," he replied.
Know, echoed in Ruth's mind.
"Wouldn't you agree with me though, that I'd give anything just to see it, beauty or no beauty?"
Ruth remained silent.
The ladder rattled. "Sorry I'm late," Esther said. But it wasn't aloud, even though it felt like it was aloud and it was for Ruth, the only thing she would ever hear, it echoed in the recesses of their minds and simulated what they were hearing. She stepped into the room, identical to her sister in every way, with a smile on her face, because Jude could sense the clenching of the muscles of her lips.
"I got what I wanted from Ivy… and she asked me to deliver something," she pulled out a small box.
"Why haven't you?" Ruth asked.
It was a well-known fact that Esther was extremely reliable, one of the things where the identicalness between the two stopped, because Ruth was in the opposite direction. People had laughs over it, calling it Russian roulette, because you never knew if you'd get Ruth or not; chances were though, you might be able to tell them apart and get the right one. Ruth, however, couldn't even be trusted to give messages to people.
"She said I should bring you along… and it's on the other side of the island," Esther didn't sit down.
"I'm up for a walk," Ruth brightened up a bit.
Jude remained impartial, but he went with them anyway.
Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.
"Why, hello!" the Professor said as they stepped inside.
Esther remained silent, and Jude was busy touching things to talk, so Ruth smiled at him and kept his lips locked firmly in his mind, trying to catch his speech from his thoughts, but not his thoughts themselves. Sometimes she would succeed, but the other times, she didn't; it was a fifty-fifty chance. "Hello Professor," she replied, and handed over the small black box that Ivy had given them.
"Ah!" he replied, and he turned and Ruth's concentration was broken so she sighed, and stepped into his mind and tried to avoid the complicated thoughts about the fabric of the universe, pokemon, and fallen angels.
She didn't succeed. "What do you mean by fallen angels?" she asked, absent-mindedly.
Professor Seth started. "What was that?" he turned back to fact her.
"She asked about fallen angels," Jude was staring at a painting on the wall, trying to see it with his eyes but not succeeding; then Jude sighed and turned back around and joined in the conversation.
"I thought she might have…" Seth continued.
"I'm sorry to intrude on your thoughts," Ruth said, almost sincerely.
"Intrude?" came his voice again.
"It's a very long story," Esther muttered.
"I'll say…" Jude could feel the coldness of the metal desk under his hand.
"We're… gifted," Ruth went on to say.
"How so? As in, psychic?" Seth asked, but Esther shook her head.
"We're cursed, too; Jude is blind, I'm deaf, and Esther is mute. But I can read minds, and Jude can sense and feel energies and tastes, and Esther can hear for miles."
"Fascinating…" Seth muttered, and he reached into his desk and pulled out a small pouch. "This is all very strange, but makes a weird kind of sense…" he grinned happily, and opened the pouch and pulled out three, strange, coloured pokeballs. The first was the colour of the lightning storm with strains of silver and the wash of rain and the hail of ice and snow.
The second was the colour of the sun and the blinding heat that poured down from it and covered the earth, blended with the existences that it kept alive by it's heat. While the third was the colour of the moon, silvery, and mixed with the tides as the gravity of the moon caused their shifting. He smiled and put the empty pouch back on the desk, and seemed to weight them.
"There is a legend…" he began. "Of three chosen ones, with three gifts, and three curses."
Jude laughed. "I can see where this is going…"
Seth continued as if he hadn't heard them. "I disbelieved this legend, of course… until a young professor found these," he held up the three pokeballs, "and a tablet that ran in with the legend, and said that the three pokeballs, made from a substance totally unlike the pokeballs we use today, would carry three separate pokemon that exist nowhere else in the world."
"And then what?" Ruth asked. But she already knew.
"We go about doing great deeds, or some other bullshit like that," Esther said.
Seth smiled. "Something like that… you should take these though," he handed one to each of them. "Who knows? You might find them handy sometime…"
Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.
"Pokemon trainer, Jude Wright," the television went, "recently reached the top five, along with good friends Esther and Ruth Veil; the three are expected to battle each other head on, though the results are entirely uncertain…"
Jude changed the channel.
"Jude Wright uses a strange pokemon classed as Seiretora. Not much is known about this pokemon but…"
He changed the channel again.
"Esther Veil uses…"
He turned the television off and looked around the room.
What is is, Ju? the small, cat-like pokemon with wings on it's paws looked up at him.
"Nothing, Se," he replied.
It always is… Se went back to sleep.
"It's always so dark…" Jude sighed, and shook his head.
These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage.
The hospital room was dark, but much darker to Jude because he couldn't see anything; he could sense everything, and the sun that was hiding behind the clouds that were hiding behind the thick curtains, but he didn't really care for the sun any more. Ruth and Esther's pictures sat on the little table next to his bead: they were both dead, and he assumed that he was about to follow.
Se was gone too… it had all been so strange.
They had saved the world, apparently, but he didn't care for the world much any more. Seth had been the one to lead them to their 'saving', but Jude didn't know what had happened to him any more… the world lay in pieces, as if it were, and one side was today and the other side was yesterday; but not just with different time zones, because one couldn't pass to the other side.
Esther and Ruth were dead, though, and they had taken parts of him away with them.
He sighed aloud.
And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.
The machine was silent when the nurse walked into the room, and Jude breathed no longer.
