railenthe | Indecisive muses...

Well, this is strange.

I actually couldn’t come up with a way to make my muses get to work on my fic so that I could have a third chapter done before the first (that is, unless they’re able to put ten pages into my head and then onto paper in less than forty-eight hours, which I highly doubt). Instead, they decided to do something else entirely.

I’m re-reading a scene in the second chapter, and I can’t figure out what I should do with a certain scene.

Here is the scene in question:

Visible in one side of the mirror, over Vincent’s right shoulder, stood a tall shadowy figure clad in a stylishly tailored business suit. His longish hair was parted in such a way so that only one of his eyes could be seen, and that single visible eye held an almost demonic glow.
Vincent tensed almost imperceptibly as he noticed the form behind him in the mirror. Hardly moving, he threw a glance over his shoulder.
There was nothing there. Only empty space.
*_*_*
"Why are you here?" He kept the tension out of his voice, but the white-knuckle grip on the porcelain of the sink revealed Vincent’s apprehension.
The entity did not answer. Instead, it looked over Vincent’s scarred and battered body, taking in the injuries before returning its gaze to the mirror, to Vincent’s reflection. It spoke a second time. "You still haven’t given up, have you."
"Answer my question, or leave."
"Why would I leave now?"
"You are not truly here."
"Oh, really?" Through the mirror, Vincent could see that the entity had begun to close the distance between them, yet still nothing was visible in physical space.
"Still thy tongue and be gone, foul spectre!"
"Oh, so now I’m ‘foul,’ am I?"
A brilliant flash of red light filled the small bath, temporarily blinding Vincent. When his vision returned, the ‘spectre’ was no longer visible in the mirror. He breathed a sigh of relief—but that relief was short-lived as his right arm was wrenched painfully behind his back. A quick look behind him revealed that the ‘spectre’ was now quite solid.
"You called me foul, and yet you wear a mark of your sin for all to see." His free hand slowly traced a path upward along Vincent’s left arm, the one covered by the claw. "This cursed arm…it brands you, marks you as a sinner, as the beast that you truly are."
The instinct to dart away from the unholy touch went unheeded as the grip pinning his human arm down tightened, and the other hand altered its course, reaching the bandages covering most of his torso.
"Release me. Release me at once, or else—"
The spectre laughed. "Or else…what?" Slowly, he undid his captive’s bandages, revealing the not-quite-healed wounds cutting across his body. "My, my. You’re in no condition to be making threats at all. Just look at you. All broken bones, ripped muscle, and the like…" Idly, he ran a finger over one of the older scars on Vincent’s body.
Vincent froze at the spectre’s touch: a solid, cold, painfully sharp sensation that sent a chill to the core of his being. The icy path that the spectre’s hand took quickly became fiery hot as the scar seemed to unzip and reopened, bleeding profusely.
"That doesn’t look good. Not at all."
Vincent found himself unable to move, locked tightly in the grasp of the spectre. He could do nothing but watch as one wound after another was reopened, powerless to look away from the mirror. Slowly the path came closer to the freshest and deepest of his injuries.
"And finally we arrive at what you allowed to happen today…" He allowed his hand to linger a moment at the place that had yet to begin regeneration. "What shall I do here?" The spectre smiled, an inhuman smile that knew no warmth. "Perhaps I should do nothing and simply leave you with the wounds you already have. Or perhaps I should take this one and reopen it little by little…of course there’s always the inelegant, yet classic tactic of simply ripping you open. There are so many options from which I can choose." The smile broadened, somehow becoming even less human than before. "Before I decide, however, you should take a close look at yourself. Before, you were the hunter; now, you are the most helpless of all prey."
Vincent had finally had enough. He attempted to pull free, unsuccessfully struggling against his captor’s hold. Why am I unable to escape? This is only a spectre, a hallucination brought on by the effects of my injuries. It should have no power over me, and yet it holds me fast…
Another cold laugh rang out. "Why do you attempt to escape me? It’s useless. I’m certain you’ve noticed that none of your new injuries have begun regeneration." He released his hold on Vincent’s human arm, moving his hand up to wrap around his neck.
"You foul demon. Be gone, and return to the hell that spawned you!"
"Fool." The hand wrapped around Vincent’s neck tightened in a strangulation hold as the one on his chest began to tear slowly into his flesh. "You truly have no idea." Cutting off the man’s scream by tightening the stranglehold, he continued, "Do you know why I am here? I can tell you."
"Why—why won’t you leave me be?!"
More laughter. "The reason why I do not leave you is the same reason you cannot run from me. You want me here. You want me to inflict this pain upon you." He released the stranglehold abruptly, and Vincent quickly grabbed the edge of the sink to keep himself upright. Hacking coughs punctuated his ragged breathing as he struggled for balance.
"Who…are you?" he managed to choke out between breaths.
"It is simple enough. I…am you."
There was a high-pitched screeching noise as Vincent’s claw gripped the porcelain tightly enough to leave scratches in the smooth surface. "Impossible. It—it’s impossible!"
"Is it?" His hands moved over bloody skin, leaving crimson trails wherever they went. "You know the truth in my words. You cannot escape me." The phantom removed his hand from Vincent’s chest, slowly licked one bloodied finger clean with apparent relish. "I am certain that now you see the absurdity of calling me foul. I am a part of you that you cannot deny. I am a reflection of your darkest desires." He took a step backwards, back toward the wall. "So long as you refuse to move forward, I shall emerge to indulge your hidden desires…to take you to the very edge of reason, of sanity, and to hold you back from the end that you have been trying to bring about for yourself."
"Leave me. I only want rest."
"Ha, ha, ha…you cannot rest. One such as you can know no respite."
"You speak nonsense, dark one…"
"I speak the truth, and you know this." Brilliant red light flashed in the room for the second time that night, and the entity vanished from view…but a disembodied voice said, "If you do not believe that I speak the truth, then sleep tonight instead of keeping watch."
The light faded from view as quickly as it had manifested.
Then there was a loud crack as the glass of the mirror splintered and broke.
*_*_*

See, my muses want to make that more graphic. I like the way it is now, but they want to make it bloodier and more…well, they want it to be more suggestive. I realize I kind of skimmed over the details in here—I did that on purpose actually—but now they want it to be more blatant "spectre-molestation" than it was before. More abuse, more pain, more spectre-suggestiveness. In short, the muses want me to redo this scene in more of a hardcore fashion. I guess I’ll work on it again, and then decide which scene to use later. Of course, if I do go with the heavy-explicit version, it will likely be the heaviest I’ve ever written. But then there’s the fact that the spectre hasn’t made his last appearance. Maybe I should save the more explicit descriptions for the second appearance…but the muses want me to consider making the first explicit and then the other one even more so…

*falls over* I don’t know how I’m going to do this anymore. I should just concentrate on getting the third chapter done so that I can start posting this thing. *gets up* But the muses won’t leave me alone until I have a second version of that scene…

*SPLAM!*