"How did you even get that thing running?"

Mystica's baritone voice awoke David from his stupor. He opened his eyes to the light from the sunset dodging its way through the trees and into his decrepit shack. As he knelt, he saw before him a makeshift contraption consisting of an old record player, whose wire had been spliced and inserted into about a half-dozen potatoes, which were powering the musically outdated machine into life. From the dusty speaker at the front emerged a ballad of music -- a waltz, composed by someone long dead and gone, his music left as a reminder of a wasted life. The gentle yet powerful notes had lulled David into a strange meditation. In his sleep, he had seen that lovely pair of eyes floating in the dark, beckoning him into the night, further into his sleep that he secretly wished would last forever. To be caged in perpetual non-motion with his heart's song. It was a slumber he longed to return to. Like waking from a dream, David wished only to go back, to be sung the record player's lullaby and disappear back into the world where everything he could ever want awaited him. But the harsh tones of Mystica's grating voice pulled him back again and again.

"Wake up, ya manc!"

The scouse insult drove him awake like riding a wooden rollercoaster. As he neared the top, he was shaken awake by the subtle yet dire vibrations from his darker half's vocals. David opened his eyes once more, observing his makeshift machine in all its glory. It was possibly one of his greatest accomplishments, as juvenile as it felt. In his childhood heyday, he might have come up with such a simple, yet deceivingly elaborate engineering experiment for a science show. And yet, from the simplicity of it all, David could see into something much more intriguing. Beneath the varnished wood surface, the player hid a community of rusted gears and wires, all working in conjunction with one another towards the same goal of beauty: to expel the sound of art and life through the half-dead speakers. Life coming from the long departed. There was something gorgeous in that, but David could not yet comprehend what it meant.

"Do one," he muttered in response to his counterpart, trying to shoo him away. But Mystica was not one to be told off.

"You've really done it in this time, 'aven't you?" mused Mystica, looking over David's odd contraption. "What's the point, then?"

"Practice," David responded curtly before elaborating. "Typical waltz music. Dancing. Preparation for the wedding."

"You really think there's going to be dancing?"

From his kneeling position, David glanced lazily over his shoulder at Mystica, his heart beating in steady rhythm along with the music. 1-2-3, 1-2-3...

"It's a proper wedding, ain't it?" David pondered aloud, a weak smile stretching across his weary face. He hadn't shaved in days, and his scraggly, almost rugged face told the tale. He ran a hand along his cheeks, savoring the delightful friction against the palm of his hand.

"Not in the slightest," Mystica laughed cruelly, pacing around behind David's back. "You really believe that things will go smoothly. Have you forgotten the world we live in? Chaos reigns, my dear self. We go in as lambs, and come out as the slaughter."

"You expect something to go wrong?"

"Oh, look at our hands, for God's sake!" Mystica growled. David complied, and sheepishly looked to the wound coursing through his hand. He poked and prodded at the still-tender injury, hurting himself if only for the overwhelming sensation of discomfort it sent along his nerves. A healthy reminder that this was, in fact, reality.

"Yes, I see your point," David mumbled, punning on the nail that has pierced his flesh almost a week prior. "Nevertheless, I hold no grudge."

"Neither do I," Mystica agreed with an annoyed tone. "But you have to consider that this won't be a typical wedding. It's the Congregation, David. Something will happen, and it will end in blood. As it always does. And always must. Your romantic notions of such a ceremony are blinding you to the obvious."

David shook his head, trying vainly to oppose the will of the sleeping god in his skull.

"Sentiment is the only valuable thing I have left," David pleaded, his eyes welling up with wasteful tears. "Let me have this."

"The girl," Mystica sighed aloud, turning his back on David and glancing out the shattered window at the dying sunset outside. The light bounced off his face, revealing how ironically pale he was. A friend to the night, glaring into the day.


"Yes," David replied, echoing Mystica's words in his head. Her eyes, staring through the dark, bobbing in time to the music from the wooden box. The waltz he wished would never end. As Mystica tore into the silent staring contest with the sun, David folded his hands in the growing dark. He smiled, and a spent tear rolled down his wan, rough cheek and disappeared in a crack in the floorboards, dropping down into the dark below, away from his eyes and into hers.

To sleep, perchance to dream...

Achievements

• 1x Tag Team Champion
  
• August 2013 Superstar of the Month (Thank you all so much!)
  
• 1x US Champion
  
• 1x X-treme Champion