The Caretaker of Objects: Alternate Ending

Am currently working on an alternate ending for my Caretaker of Objects, this will tie in with some new designs for Assignment 2: Mystery Play, continuing the story with 2 distinctly different styles reflecting the 2 different paths the Caretaker could have taken.

Equus

The Object Collector burst through his front door, slamming it closed behind him and sliding down the glass panel. He felt sick. He rushed to his feet, running through the huge empty spaces, up his sloping open living area untill he arrived at his bathroom. Opening the door he already knows its too late, still he makes a desperate lunge, tripping on the bath and breaking his arm on the porcelain, vomitting all over the floor.

The fact that he had no mirror in his bathroom could have been strange, but he never noticed, there was only 1 mirror he cared to look in anyway. Stumbling out of the bathroom he continues his ascent, feeling alone in the huge empty spaces. The glass walls made the house cold during the night, but warm during the day, so he shivered. reaching the bedroom, surrounded by the fragile glass that made up the majority of this part of the house, he rushes to his tower.
He always came here when the confusion became too much. What had he done again? already it was blurring, a flash of a womans head rolling along the ground came to him and he dry retched. Stumbling to his mirror. Who has this man? He didn't look familiar. Anger and confusion bubbled and he hit the mirror, shattering it into 100 tiny fragments. Staring at his shattered reflection, he became aware that this room is visable from almost every surrounding vantage point. He panics, looking for a corner to hide his shame. Crying out as he remembers the room is a perfect circle, nowhere to hide, even the roof was made of glass, god peering down in silant judgment...how he wished he had an umbrella like Prometheus.

The Wire: The Caretaker of Objects Story

(Perhaps) He would never forget, the incredible tenacity humans have for forgetting. He was, after all, not remarkable. Balding, aged, strange, there were the things he saw, where was ‘he’? He collected objects, mundane on the surface, mundane on close inspection, but incredibly deep and moving when examined philosophically. His objects or ‘stories’ as he liked to call them, held a place in history, defining those involved in the events. This was his problem, he had no object that defined him, where was his story? With this in mind he searches...


...Metal is cold, strange, he thinks he should have known that. The metal itself was unimportant, what he was looking for was the small inde...yes! There! The indent in the base of the ring like the metal was ripped itself. Only one who knew the story would guess that a knife thrust caused that mark, struck on the unselfish palm of young Dante as he strove to take the injury himself rather than let an unfortunate sex slave’s life end then and there. The moment that defined his existence perfectly inscribed for history to remember! Poor Dante, how he eventually met his end the object keeper didn’t know, he simply slips the ring off his cold dead fingers and renews his search...


... Thief? The word sounds so juvenile, grave robber? Bah! They need to be in graves first, besides, it was nowhere near as provocative as murderer, better yet mass murderer. Then again that also falls short of dictator, or possibly the Omnificent, evil incarnate. Why he thought these things is beyond me, would he even know himself? Doubtful. The night brought strange thoughts, he had long since ceased fighting them. He merely searches...


... Sometimes he cursed God. Who was he! To make his immortality so unobtainable, so insubstantial! He was bitter now, three stories resting in his carry bag, carefully selected and obtained by Him! Surely that deserved some thanks he thought... Alas! curses, oaths and downright blasphemy did nothing to incite the divines intervention. He worried perhaps the almighty didn’t notice him either. So he searched...again...


...A scream rang in the night. Hope. He ran as fast as his tiny legs would carry him. Down an alley he pursued the echoing sound, heart thumping, blood pounding in his ears before he espies a scene he has dreamt of for years uncounted. Two forms, writhing in the shadows of a backwater building, windows along the street shut and boarded up, testament to the fact no one else would be coming. His moment had arrived! He shouted, a man, bent over the form of a women, his arms struggling to tighten the strangling wire around her throat, looks up in time to see a fist aimed at his head. He staggers back, the Object Collector’s eyes gleam in triumphant madness as he draws his knife, ready to be the hero history would remember! He thinks of his displays, and the spectacular knife, smeared with a rusty brown colour that everyone would know as blood, that would tell his heroic story...how the people would remember his name! He steps forward, only to find himself slipping on the icy ground, he stumbles and falls backwards, the dagger slipping from his grasp. He groans in mental anguish! He stares, stunned, as the woman he was destined to save, picks up the knife and plunges it into the attacking man’s heart. NO! His Dagger! His blood! His Story! The object collector’s eyes become unfocused, a red haze swims in front of his vision, and he is hot, in spite of the snow surrounding him on the ground. He is up in a second; mad with rage, his hands grasp the wire still wrapped around the woman’s throat. With a feat of strength fuelled by the endless frustration his searching had accumulated within the man’s soul, he pulls, tight. Saliva escaping the corners of his mouth, eyes bulging with hate, he pulls so hard the wire cuts into skin, then muscle...then bone. The woman’s head falls to the floor beneath the object collector’s feet, he looks down and see’s the bloody wire in his hands. Laughter escapes his lips now...His Wire, His Blood...His Story.