08-Oct-2000
revised: 13-Mar-2005

The Hollow Men by Draco

Part One

"Mistah Kurtz--he dead." The old man stumbles the answer. His hands tighten around his bottle of whiskey as if he is afraid I would take it away from him.

A penny for the Old Guy. I search my pockets for money to give to him, but my hands are shaking too much...

Heero is dead. Of course. It figures. How much abuse can the human body take? Even the perfect soldier must break--as all war machines do.

I walk away from the old man. The ground shakes beneath me, and I tremble with it. It is difficult to stand.

I hold my hand in front of me so I may see my own hand trembling. I hate trembling. I am not supposed to tremble. Shaking by my own convulsion... instead of being moved...

God, it's all just so damn sad. The five of us... no I don't care about them. The two of us.

We are the hollow men. Our names are meaningless, mere numbers. Our identities are interchangeable, pawns in someone else's game of chess. We are faceless, sharing the same shape and moves.

We pilot large robots to stop god damn pacifist from fighting each other while from afar someone else holds the control.

We are the stuffed men. Leaning together, headpiece filled with straw. We stand in a endless field of grays as guardians of someone else's harvest. Our presence menacing, yet we are powerless to move on our own.

Alas, our dried voices, when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar, as our opened mouth screams, are silent against the coming storms.

I shake myself deliberately, as I stumble back in to my hotel room searching for booze, recognizing how pathetic I have become. Because, in the end, I am haunted by the sole actions that I took as my own.

I want to scream, but my throat is swelling with alcohol, and I cannot speak.

I run to the bathroom to vomit, tossing my head into the toilet. I hear the involuntary whimpers I am making. The only sound I can clearly hear myself making.

When I finally stop vomiting, I crawl over to the sink, turning on the cold water.

Pulling myself up, I pour the cold water over my face. For a moment, I study myself in the mirror. I look in to my own empty eyes as the world around me turns to gray. Shape without form, shade without colour... is this what death looks like? This paralyzed force? Staring at myself, I try to gesture without motion, miming myself.

I don't know how long I stand there, but after measurable time, I finally walk to my bed, and collapse on the mattress. My hand, as if by its own volition, reaches to the Bible by my bedside. Fumbling through the pages, I find the photo of Heero and me.

How dare you die without me you bastard?!

Heero stares me back with his vacant glance. Those who have crossed with direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom remember us, --if at all-- not as lost violent souls, but only as the hollow men... the stuffed men.

Part Two

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams.

I bolt up from my bed. My face covered with sweat. In the darkness I can hear the sound of my own breathing pulsing roughly against the thunder outside.

I walk away from my bed. My head blissfully buzzing from the alcohol from last night.

I followed him. Of course I followed him. I want... I need to know where he is living... The game is getting old. It's better that one of us gives up. Old Murry played his role beautifully. And Duo believed. Of course he would believe. The self-proclaimed Shinigami is nothing more than child.

There are those who believe love can change everything. As if love had some sort of magic powers. Relena certainly seems to believe that. I was surprised when I found that Duo did also... strange how willing we are to delude ourselves.

I bang my head against the refrigerator, willing his eyes away from my head. I open another bottle of vodka.

The vodka goes down hard as the room is lit up for a moment by lightening. Few moments later, thunder followed. There is something pathetic about thunder's eternal race against lightening.

Funny how Duo sees the whole world as if it were alive and after love. Like love is a universal denominator that cancels out everything else.

I gulp down the vodka.

Why does he see everything with so much faith; taking meaning into individual lives, lighting a candle for everyone who had fallen. I have no such religion. The innocent and the guilty have long ago blended into one continuous spectrum.

Slowly and deliberately, I let myself slide on to the floor gripping on to my bottle of liquor.

Between the lapse of thunder and lightning, I can see him standing over me. His fucking eyes... in death's dream kingdom, these do not appear. Like sunlight on a broken column.

In my mind, in my head, in my dream, I feel his eyes.

But in a moment, I am alone, and shivering against the wind as I find myself standing in death's dream kingdom alone. There, is a tree swinging and voices are in the wind's singing more distance and more solemn than a fading star. There, stands death with his scythe, his eyes mute against the cacophony of a thousand cries of lost souls.

Did I bring death here, or did death follow me?

Don't follow me here Duo... You don't belong here. Don't become death, Duo. I already am. Let me be no near in death's dream kingdom whilst you watch on.

I don't want to see you here. I don't want to see you altered.

Let me also wear such deliberate disguises rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves in a field behaving as the wind behaves no near so... so I might hide in the shadows of forever. Because I... so that we might... not that final meeting in the twilight kingdom.

Part Three

This is the dead land.

In the lone road, only a few apathetic cars zoom by. The rest is darkness as the wind howls uselessly at the moon. Fallen leaves collect in my windshield. For a moment, the leaves try to cling on, but the speed eventually rips them away.

This is cactus land, without water and against the wind. Fingers that form a thousand sharpened knifes cannot caress; outstretched arms full of daggers cannot embrace. Yet perhaps there are some masochistic fools who would rush in where angels fear to tread.

In the distance I hear the roll of the thunder. How appropriate for the sky to weep for me now. Perhaps I should be honored that the desert sky takes pity on me. But like everything else, this too is an illusion created by man and not by God.

My car moans as it stops in front of the decayed ruins of the Maxwell Church. This is the dead land--here the stone images are raised. I find myself standing in front of Father Maxwell's grave, marked by the marble angel. Father Maxwell would not have wanted it that way. I think he much rather be left alone in some unmarked land than to be guarded by a powerless idol with a heart of stone.

Are you happy now Father? Are you with the One you so ardently defended and believed in? My lips form a remembered prayer from long ago. A prayer for you Father, because there are no prayers for me. If your God exists, he is deaf to my pleas.

The rain begins to pour down on me. Its coldness bitterly biting into my skin, but somehow I feel nothing.

You told me once Father, that it was the ultimate sin to take your own life. If that was true Father, there is no redemption for me. How do you redeem what already died?

My knees cave in as I collapse in front of Father Maxwell. I raise my hand to stone images. Here they receive the supplication of a dead man's hand under the twinkling of a fading star. If Heero was here, he would ridicule me for my blind faith that you can hear me. Now that you are dead Heero, do you still mock me?

Is it like this in death's other kingdom?

My body quivering against the cold, my eyes burning with fallen rain. Perhaps the gun had been unnecessary. Perhaps if I just stay here long enough...

Tell me Heero is wrong, Father. Tell me that this isn't my punishment for my faith in...

My head is light and I stumble forward, my head falling into the mud. In the distance I see the figure of Heero coming towards me. You were watching me, Heero. I told you that you were wrong about the dead.

I feel his arms around me as I let darkness settle in. God of my Father, if you ever heeded my prayers, hear me now. I beg of you, please don't let me wake up. I refuse to wake up. This is hell when waking alone, at the hour when we are trembling with tenderness, lips that would kiss, but form prayers to broken stone.

Part Four

The eyes are not here. Death stands there with his scythe. His long chestnut hair swinging wildly in the nonexistent wind. His eyes are covered by a pale blindfold. I reach for him, my hands frantically tearing at the fabric of the blindfold, but there are no eyes... only two hollow holes. There are no eyes here in this valley of dying stars.

I wake up with in silent screams, but my hand is not free to fall over my face to hide the terror. Death's hand clinging desperately to mine even in his fevered dreams.

Frantically, I escape from his bedside, my own mind drunk and delirious. I turned away from the closed eyes. I hear my own heart beat erratically in the darkness.

I had found his gun. And for a moment I felt seduced by the temptation of simply ending it for both of us. But Death had been what trapped us; it will not free either of us. No, the irony would be too great.

"Heero... " like an enchantment, I turn to him at the sound of my name. His eyes are clouded over with fever, but he forces them to focus on me.

"Heero," He reaches out to me but his hand does not reach me. Has it ever? But I am under a spell as I close the distance between us. The eyes draw me closer until I feel his skin against mine. His face is hot against mine, and his lips are not as soft as I remembered.

His arms trap me in his embrace, and I feel the desperate heat between us. I wonder if it is he or I who is delusional in this moment. Watching from a distance, I know I am being drawn into the illusion once more... the empty promise of hope... Death's heat... I am torn back into the heat, and there is no escape...

In this hollow valley of our existence, we are burning against each other. In this broken jaw of our lost kingdoms, we are devoured by desolation of bleak passion. In this last of meeting places we grope together and avoid speech. In this shattered trance, words had long ago melted into nonsensical sounds at Babel, and the screams cannot be heard.

I dissolve against him, as we are gathered on this beach of the tumid river, hopeless unless innocence could be regained.

"Hold me closer," Duo whispers.

I collapse against him, and I feel unconsciousness slowly creeping up in my mind. I am once again sightless, unless the eyes reappear as the perpetual star multifoliate rose of death's twilight kingdom.

"Hold me forever," Death touches my face.

The hope only of empty men.

Part Five

Here we go round the prickly pear, they chanted. I cannot join them. I know how it's supposed to go. There are no mulberry bushes here. There is not enough water. Sickly cacti are the only things that grow here. Sharp and menacing and not a bush. Father Maxwell stands by me and says nothing.

Prickly pear prickly pear, here we go round the prickly pear. Their singsong voice carries so far away in this desert. So far away that I wonder if God can hear it. I look up at Father Maxwell. He smiles back at me and nods. Prickly pears and children, both sickly, that's what He hears-- in the darkness and the cacti prayers of children at five o'clock in the morning.

I open my eyes, but Father Maxwell is no longer there. He's no longer besides me. And in the thick air, I can smell last night's sins. Heero cannot be here. I'm trapped between the idea and the reality. I laugh at my delusions, but I'm startled by the sound of my own laughter, as its solitary sound pierced the darkness. And I see him get up from somewhere near me.

"Heero... " a chant. There are no mulberry bushes here.

Heero steps closer to me, and I struggle to get up. To hold him, to hang on to the prickly, the sickly... and he stops moving between the motion and the act, and in the distance between us falls the shadow.

For Thine is the Kingdom, the children chanted in the distance. And I cannot join them. Father Maxwell does not make me. Father, oh Father...

I collapse back into the bed. I can feel the sweat on my forehead.

Heero just stands there. His eyes are black holes that focus on me. Sucking me in. Always sucking me in.

That was my chant. But there are no mulberry bushes.

Are you a ghost Heero? Or are you really here? But I cannot speak. I cannot make the sounds because it might all shatter and disappear.

I see my gun, and it's lying beside me on the nightstand.

It's the ultimate sin to take your life, Father Maxwell says. Between the conception and the creation is the miracle of God and Christ.

I look over to Heero, and he is staring back at me. And I can smell us. I can smell us between the sheets.

"You are a bastard, Heero," I whisper. "How can you leave me?"

Heero opens his mouth to speak, but I cannot hear the words. Between the emotion and the response falls the Shadow.

"Life is very long," I say.

Heero closes the distance between us, and suddenly his mouth covers mine, and he's sucking, and sucking, and taking and taking.

Between the desire--he's pressing in to me and thrashing harshly against me--and the spasm... the prickly pear, the prickly pear.

Between the potency--I kiss his face and taste the salt on his skin, and I lick his lips and drink in the whiskey in his breath--and the existence... there are no mulberry bushes here, the children chant.

Between the essence--he stiffens and he bites in to my shoulder--and the descent... falls the Shadow.

Heero bolts up from me and starts towards the door.

For Thine is the Kingdom... their voices carry so far in the desert.

I pick up the gun and aim it at his head.

For thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

"This is the way the world ends," I whisper. Heero does not look at me, but he stops in mid stride.

"This is the way the world ends," he repeats, his voice soft.

I turn the gun and point it at my own head. Heero opens the door and I press the trigger.

The gun clicks and nothing happens.

Heero's emptied the chambers.

I laugh.

This is the way the world ends.

The door shuts.

Not with a bang but a whimper.

~ Owari

Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us --if at all-- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer--

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom.

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkling of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
and avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
and the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Not with a bang but a whimper.

(:./draco/hollow)