caughtinanetwork | [ dream / video ]

They peer in at him with their cruel, beady eyes and laugh and jeer with long crooked smiles, faces half-hidden by masks so that he couldn't tell them apart even if the light from their candles didn't leave him half-blind. They're faceless and nameless, and it's almost more of an effort than it's worth to struggle when their greedy fingers reach for him, curl as relentless and vice-like as shackles around his bird-boned limbs. Once, they held hot metal to his back, and he had heard and smelt his skin sizzling and cooking almost before he'd felt it. But oh, he had felt it--still feels it, a constant raw stinging hurt which he doesn't dare to touch. Branded like an animal. It isn't surprising; they treat him with less dignity than one. It's all hands and eyes and cold iron bars between his fingers, dirt and blood caked in his hair and between his toes, cuts and scrapes not healing and fresh dark bruises blooming where they've hit him or held him too tight. He's long since given up praying. Mother had promised him that God existed, loving and merciful, but she must have been lying.

He hates them. That hatred is the only thing that keeps him alive. It feeds him when they don't.

He knows, when they come in jewels and silk and velvet, in the largest crowd he's seen yet, that it's his time, as he's seen so many others die, writhing and crying and sobbing, or silent and empty. But he's special, he hears them whisper. He's the Phantomhive boy. He's been so lovely to play with, but now it's time for him to fulfill his intended purpose.

He squirms as they pull him from the cage. Or at least, he thinks he's being pulled from the cage--isn't he? There are hands and faces and chains and is that the stone altar beneath him, or the metal floor of the cage still? He's thrashing, either way, using the last of his strength to kick and scream and claw. He's held down against the stone--he's pressed to the bars--wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and at once there's a knife raised high above him and a sinister hand outstretched before him, sharp black claws beckoning, promising, and he's made his choice, because he will not die here. So he reaches desperately past the bars, and as the knife slices down, as those long fingers wrap tight and binding around his own, his right eye burns and he screams:

"Kill them all!"

[ He wakes with that scream still on his lips. It dies in his throat as soon as he realizes he's awake, and his fingers knot in the bedsheets, white-knuckled and shaking. His chest heaves as he attempts to regain his breath, in and out slowly through his nose, his mouth set in a hard grimace. His hair is a mess, his white night shirt sticking uncomfortably to his skin with sweat, and he isn't wearing his eye patch--but that's no matter, really, as the video feed catches him directly from his left.

It's a good few minutes before Ciel notices the blinking light from the Dreamberry on his night table beside the bed, but when he does, he sits up at once, plush comforters and goosefeather pillows tossed wildly aside in his haste. He blocks his right eye from view with one hand and bats the device straight off the table with the other. It clatters to the floor, but doesn't seem to be damaged, and continues to record the ceiling until, after a time, the feed automatically cuts off. ]

Threaded | Flat

[ He wondered how long it would take for this to come on the network. The demon had seen the other dreams that came from this night alone and it struck him, how this little transformed device could have suck power. But the moment he recognized the one that came on screen, he knew it would be yet another one of those nights.

By the time the scream hits his senses, he's already halfway down the hall and headed for his master's bedroom. It would take a few seconds more until that familiar knock would come to Ciel's door. ]

Master? Is everything alright?

[Such a horrible nightmare.

Amane isn't that close to him, personally. But she's naturally worried for him. Regardless of who the person is, a nightmare is always unsettling.]

...Phantomhive?

[He isn't the type to ask "are you okay?" That question could be answered by the child's frantic attempts at turn off the feed. No, he was not okay.

Not that he would generally ask, anyway. No, he's just gaining information. Whether that was merely a nightmare from the boy or a memory, he wasn't sure. Self preservation, huh? That near death experience, that command...

Hm.

Of course, he's filing this away in his own memory, but that's not going to be what he addresses when he responds:]

I suppose we've finally discovered what these devices are for. Technology has advanced quite a bit, but to essentially eavesdrop on a dream is something that's unheard of as far as I know.

[It's not something he likes; and he's going to be even more self aware of what he does and dreams about now.]

action forvaaar~

[Video]

voice;