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The world bled pink. Soft petals drifted in the air, suspended mid-fall, caught in an unseen breath that refused to let them touch the ground. The sky pulsed– a wash of gold and velvet shifting too slowly, a melting wax of fabric and doilies and God and stains, a patch of something divine bleeding through the cracks of reality with Golden press-ups against the stars. Not next to the door, but right there.
I sat in the grass, but it didn't feel like grass. It was too soft, too damp, clinging to my skin like static, like mossy silk soaked in natural honey. The scent of it was thick, too sweet, sticking to the back of my throat. I swallowed, but it only burned, and I realized I was drinking glass and that the glass was heating and cooling in the depths of my gullet.
Something was so wrong with me, so bled free and so freely bleeding that it simply could not do anything but cry– but cry it could not either. The air pressed down on me. heavy, molten. It pooled in my lungs, not like breath as breath should or could, but as light turned to liquid, a thick and searing drink that filled me from the inside out. I had felt this before. That creeping, pulsating glow threading itself through my veins, that made me weightless, that gave me a blue tone to my skin, and gifted me the weight of being too heavy all at once. I lifted a hand to my throat. My pulse stuttered, stuttering, delayed and wrong. Where my fingers brushed my skin, I left streaks of light behind, thin, glowing veins splitting out like cracks in porcelain.
Her drink she sips.
Across from me, she flickered.
One moment, my Goddess was whole and luminous and serene and infinite. The next, she was stuttering, skipping frames like a corrupted reel of film, her form jittering between presence and absence. Her eyes caught mine, and I felt her looking through me. A desire to be imitated. An unreal, decrepit, machinized imitation. I wanted nothing more than to be her. To serve her. To eat and drink from her, my glorious God!
The heat crawled higher, tightening my ribs and breaking my bones, the popping and squeezing turning my breath into something shallow and desperate. Her mouth moved with no sounds and all light. Just blinding, writhing light where her voice should be.
I tried to speak. My lips cracked, gold pooling at the edges. The wind rushed past me, a whisper curling inside my ear, but it wasn't mine.
It was her signal interference. Staring at me in her corrupted form. And she was watching, wasn't she? Out in the garden? With mom? Tending to the flowers and the bluebells and the gates and the fences to paint, and my God, the light doesn't blind me. It's a devouring thing.
I am sitting in the grass. I am standing at my mother's bedside. I am six years old, scraping my knee against pavement, and there are other people here! Aha! I knew it must be true! I am the falling kind, I am the drowning child, I am being born, my old lungs splitting open with their first stolen breath, and I am dying, my ribs caving inward, something vast pressing into my chest, into my skull, into the spaces between my teeth and everything is happening and I was all, and I was naught, and I was not where I should be.
Everything that has happened has always been happening.
A soul penned this into existence, a requiem of sorts that's end would only be there to fit a new beginning.
Who crafted such a strange sin?
I clutch my arms, but they are not my arms. They are younger limbs, smaller hands, then and before they were older, frailer than bone, then simply, all bone. I see myself across from me, not my mouth flickering in shapes I barely recognize, but me through- a mirror, and a second mirror, and my green eyes are no longer a natural green. A child. A corpse. A boy laughing with a mouth full of stars. I taste them in her mouth. She spits them out, her saliva sticking to my teeth. It's euphoric. I feel her tongue press upon my own.
My Goddess watches. She does not move. She does not want to move. Her light splits open my body, and inside, there is only more of me. My crying of crying of sobbing of fractured selves, crawling over each other, screaming, praying, remembering all at once. I taste blood and honey and dust. I feel heartbreak and joy in the same instant, neither distinct from the other, no antonyms exist but an interference of the other, and I feel every inch of myself, and I am pleading to love and to die. I am here, but I am everywhere I have ever been.
I hear my mother calling my name. My mother is dead, Jesse. My mother does not exist. The first time I was afraid of the dark. I was never afraid of the dark. A voice whispering something I was never wanting to hear. My hands are covered in gold. No veins. No cracks. They're so smooth, my God! So beautiful. I am so smooth. I try to close my eyes, but I have no eyelids. I have no face. I am watching myself. I am speaking to myself. I am reaching toward myself across lifetimes, fingertips just barely touching. And then I am sitting in the grass again.
I'm such a cursed womb.
Breathing.
Shaking.
Radiance hums beneath my skin, curling in my throat like something waiting to bloom. Radiance hums beneath my skin, curling in my throat like something waiting to blossom.
Across from me, my Goddess flickers. She is smiling. The flickering worsens. She shifts, stuttering between frames, a body never meant to hold one shape. Vais, passing by forms of flowers and- there she goes again! She is pale, porcelain-slick with something that isn't sweat. She is burning, her dress drenched in the color of ripe persimmons. What are persimmons? My hands, bleeding gold their processi, they bleed persimmons the color of her dress. She is shrouded in black, her arms draped in something sleek, sterile, unnatural. She is familiar, skin the color of drowned lilies, a thing I have known before but should not remember. My vision fractures. I am vomiting massive clumps of fruit. They taste worse when they are just as sweet.
I see through her eyes.
I am staring at myself, body warped, smeared in gold, convulsing in the grass. I am divine. I am pathetic. I am reaching toward her- toward me- and I am afraid of what I look like. I see through its eyes.
No. No, no. No.
There is something else watching. A lesser form. A presence too large to name, stretching beyond the folds of perception, observing me with a mouth that does not open and eyes that do not close. I do not know it, but it has always known me. It stares without blinking, pressing against the edges of my mind, pushing, pressing, slipping something cold into the back of my skull. My bottle. My baby bottle. A needle, an air gun and POW-
I see through my mother's eyes.
She is kneeling beside me, or I am kneeling beside myself, or I am seeing myself kneeling beside her. She is holding my face, or I am holding my own, or I am sinking, sinking, (sinking?) into something too warm, too honey-like, too clump and clinging, cloying and thick to be any natural elixir. Her lips move, but she does not speak. Her nails dig into my cheeks, but I cannot feel them. I see through the Goddess again, but she has changed. Her dress is now black, swallowing the light, a brilliant, white, and blinding thing. No, it is tattered, dirt-streaked, a fabric that was never meant to be worn, a rag, a decadent stain! No, it is red and fresh, limp and limper just before the throat is slit. My crime. My horrid crime. I am dying. It is the most euphoric thing I have ever felt.
I am dying again. I have died before, and I am reliving it, and I am living it for the first time, and I am going to die and I have already died and this moment will happen again and again and again. I am born screaming. I am alone in a house that should not be empty. I am standing at the xiezhi, watching my reflection ripple like oil. I am gripping my own throat, strangling something inside me before it can speak. I am here. I am now. I am not here. I am not now. My Goddess is laughing, her mouth shifting between delicate lips and something jagged, something lined with too many teeth. Her flickering slows. The golden light is fading. My veins are beginning to empty, my muscles to atrophy, my senses to dilute. I can feel the blood drop down my nose, and the grass below my feet is no longer soil. I am no man before God. I do not remember how to breathe. I try to move, but my limbs do not belong to me. The petals in the air have turned gray. No- no God, they are ash, bleeding grey-red things, the remnants of man, the remnants of mankind, the receptacles for dreams they will never fulfill, of shadows they will never fill, of goals that will never be achieved, their unobtained symphonies of obtainment! My Goddess, her honor dear lightly, her honorific stain, my Goddess of Death and Misery commences, and all else ends.
She reaches for me.
I do not know if she is saving me or pulling me deeper beyond where I had once began.
The light is peeling.
Stripped away in curling, translucent sheets, lifting like the skin of something raw, something exposed to air for far too long, the fingernails beginning to flay and twist from the outstretched phalange of wall. My body- if I still own such a self-righteous and prideful thing- feels stretched thin, my bones ringing like glass struck with a tuning fork. My heartbeat is not my own. My lungs expand in someone else's chest. My mouth is opening, but the sound comes from a throat I do not remember swallowing with.
My Goddess shudders. She flickers so violently it feels like she is being erased and redrawn, frame by agonizing frame. Her eyes are burning suns, hair wild, cascading in thick curls down the back of a dress that drips, soaked in molten amber. Her lips part as something cruel, something indulgent, a queen looking down on a pawn who still thinks he can move. The weight of her gaze is crushing, the sheer command of her presence bending the air around me, and I feel– small. Effortlessly breakable.
Then, she stutters, her outline breaking apart, red bleeding into white bleeding into black. Her body reforms. Now her smile is different, closed-lipped, knowing. Her skin is pale, almost artificial in its flawlessness. She is pristine, untouched, as though her form has been calculated into existence, every feature placed with surgical precision. Her hands are gloved, folded neatly in her lap, waiting, patient. The souvenirs of her.
Then she is something else. Something else entirely.
A sharp jawline, piercing eyes, something dark and militaristic about the rigid lines of her coat. She is not seated anymore. She is standing, looming, cold and mechanical. Her pupils burn red-hot in the haze of my breaking vision, dissecting me, disassembling me with a gaze that seems to catalogue every fragile, useless part of me. She does not blink. She does not need to. She blinks, cavorts, and twists again, her face cracking like a glitch, static threading through her figure until she dissolves–
I know this one.
A dress dark as a dead ocean, hair like ink that has bled across a page. Her face is hollow, the shadows pooling beneath her eyes making her look like she has not slept in centuries. Her expression is distant, distant, distant, as though her gaze does not land on this world at all.
She is not a Goddess.
She is a funeral procession trapped in a body, a monument to something long past, a song played over and over again until all that remains is the echo. She flickers–again, again, and again– And I feel my own face breaking apart.
I am shifting, disassembling, peeling like her manged, decrepit old film. My body is moving forward, but I do not remember standing. My hands are stretching toward her, but I do not remember commanding them to reach.
I have always been here. I have never been here. I am seeing the past, the future, the infinite reflections of every version of myself that has ever stood in this moment before. My furtherances, my furtherance upon me- the air is thick with my own scent.
The petals have disintegrated.
The light is no longer golden, no longer warm. It is sickly, something dying in the sky above me, rotting in the seams of reality. I feel my skin pulling apart, my eyes seeing themselves from the outside, my breath leaving my body and not returning.
She leans in. Her flickering slows. Her mouth opens, and I understand nothing.
In her teeth, the walls of our dream fall down. The world collapses inward. Or maybe it never existed in the first place. Maybe the picnic, the petals, the sky- maybe they were suggestions of a world, a place half-way through its cataclysmic formations, a stone memory bleeding out from something dilapidated and rotted, something dredged up from the bottom of an ocean and barely survived its dear surfacing. The light is folding, breaking apart into pointy, toothy and cragged seams, and I can hear my own voice overlapping with itself in an unholy chorus, whispering things I have never said but will say, things that have already been spoken but I have never heard. There is a river somewhere, an impossible current pulling me toward something I will not be allowed to return from. There are bones beneath my feet but my feet do not exist. There is a clock in my chest but the hands are turning in opposite directions– God, my God, I can feel a version of myself screaming, but it is not me, not yet, not here. I see a city where time has stopped and a king who sits upon a throne of rot. I see the gates, metal and cold, flickering in and out of reality. I see a body crumpled in the grass, bleeding gold, and I know it is mine but I have never touched the ground, and I never had golden armor, and I never had crimson crows, and I never was a drinker. I feel hands, so many hands, reaching for me from the past, the future, hands that have already let me go, hands that will never hold me again. I hear voices overlapping, voices I should not know- a lady, distant, a raven-like man with red eyes speaking in a tone I do not recognize, a pauper laughing, his voice carved into the air her gracious wounds, a cherry blossom child glitching, stuttering to a great black beast of flesh, and a godless mange who whispers something I will not understand until it is far, far too early. I hear my own name, but it does not belong to me, it is me from now and the me from then, and I hear a collective golden cry, and I feel radiance, radiance, radiance boiling beneath my skin, peeling back the layers of my consciousness in paper-thin skin stretched over something that should not be perceived. A skin, an abyss of cloy. I understand something about her death, something about her gods, something about the nature of my own existence that I was never supposed to know. I feel my own spine unraveling, my thoughts fragmenting, I am becoming unmade, I am slipping into the seams of the universe, I am unraveling into the thing that watches, the thing that counts, the thing that does not forget, the thing that stands at the end of all things– And then. And then.
Hands. White as untouched snow, cold as the moment before a scream. Long fingers cradle my face, firm and unrelenting, pulling me back into something I can barely recognize as real.
Her eyes, red, searing, and terrible- bear into mine, twin eclipses burning through my vision. There is no warmth in them. No kindness. No cruelty. Just something absolute, something that has seen far too much and refuses to blink. Her grip tightens. I cannot move. I cannot breathe.
And she speaks.
"Ruhig."
The most beautiful sound in the world.
The pressure lifts.
Not all at once, not like a snapped wire or a candle blown out, but like the slow release of something coiled too tight, something unspooling just enough for breath to slip through. My lungs still burn, my pulse still trips over itself like a record skipping, but I am here again.
At least, I think I am.
The picnic is gone. I am seated at a table now, its surface smooth beneath my fingers, polished but not warm. The air is cool, still humming faintly with the residue of whatever just happened, but at least it isn't choking me anymore. Across from me, she sits. Gently swaying, composed, watching.
She has changed again. No more flickering, no more stuttering between frames like something failing to exist properly. Now she is stable, solid, real. Pale skin, almost sickly under the dim light, and white hair cut sharp, straight. Her clothes are simple, neat, a high-collared uniform of deep gray, the fabric stiff with an almost clinical precision. But her lips- her lips are dark red, a color so deep it looks like dried blood. When she breathes, there's a scent of something nonperfume, something nonfloral, but a sterile preservation, like metal flowers left too long in the cold.
A drink sits in front of me. I don't remember seeing her place it there, but I reach for it anyway, fingers curling around the cup, the rim cool against my skin. I take a slow sip, half-expecting it to taste like wine, or tea, or something familiar, but it tastes like nothing. Not water. Not air. Just an absence, a lack of sensation where taste should be. I swallow, and even though it's nothing, even though it shouldn't mean anything, my heartbeat settles. My muscles loosen, the static in my skull dims.
Okay. Okay.
That helped. I set the cup back down carefully, adjusting my posture, shifting in the chair like I'm trying to remember how a body is supposed to sit in one. My fingers drum against the table once, twice, quick little motions, grounding myself in the ordinary. The weight of my limbs, the drag of fabric against my skin, the steady inhale-exhale of my breath.
I glance at her again, at the way she sits so still, so perfect, like she has never known the need to fidget, to adjust, to hesitate. A beat of silence stretches between us. I roll my shoulders, then lean forward slightly, resting an elbow on the table.
"So." My voice is steadier than I expected. "You do this with all your guests, or am I just special?"
She doesn't respond to my snarky comment. She just looks at me. All of me. The drink helped me. I feel less aware. Dumber. Stupider. But, I'm still stabilizing, still observing, still overwhelmingly everything. The air between us is dense, like the moment before a storm, where the sky holds its breath, and you don't know if the first drop of rain will be gentle or if the whole world is about to split open.
She watches me. Not idly, not passively. She watches. Her gaze is weighted, pressing into me like hands that aren't touching, fingers curled around my throat without the need for skin.
Then, she speaks.
"What if," she begins, voice like glass cooled over more than centuries, controlled, measured, "there was a fundamental, unending, horrible well of want in your soul that, if truly satisfied, would lead to great pain for all those you hold closest and, in turn, their absolute and total revilement of you?"
I blink.
I don't have an answer. 'Man, I don't know,' I think.
She laughs, quiet and smooth, a sound that rolls through the space like ink spilling over marble. "That's what I thought," she says, not unkindly. Then she exhales, long and slow, the weight in her voice shifting into something contemplative, something distant. "A question brought up by one of your kind. I was curious what you'd find to be a good answer."
"It has been almost ninety cycles since I have been this close to awakening again. Would you like to know why?"
A shiver crawls up my spine.
I open my mouth, trying to grab hold of something solid, something real. "Why now?" The question stumbles out before I can stop it. "Why are you so close to waking right now?"
Her red eyes flicker, unreadable. "Because I am wanted."
I frown. "What does that mean?"
She tilts her head. "The same reason God chooses anything!"
I want to laugh, but it doesn't quite come out. Instead, I shake my head. "That's not an answer."
"It is the only answer," she muses. "Humankind is wicked. The only creatures to invent evil, and yet they still choosingly commit it. Where they choose to commit it, I will be."
Her words feel too quiet for how loud they are.
She continues, her voice never quite changing in tone, yet every syllable settling deep, like a weight pressing against the back of my ribs.
"Tragic, tragic things. The only beings who can dream of something better, who can choose to do better, yet they walk willingly into the ruin they know waits for them."
My throat tightens.
"And you?" I ask. "Where does my God fit in all this?"
She smiles, but it's small, thin. "Your God wants to experience," she says. "I want to know. I want to see, and feel, and understand. But, it seems, I will never be understood. That is a silly dream. A dream that God had."
The way she speaks– it's calm, yes. But there's something else beneath it, something that makes my skin crawl without an answer as to why.
"I am searching for stability," she continues, slow, patient. "To hold form, to maintain, to persist."
She is not telling me everything. She is never going to tell me everything. But I am at a loss for what to do.
Her gaze sharpens, and she leans forward just slightly.
"I could stay with you," she offers, the words careful, deliberate. "I could help you."
My fingers twitch against the table. I feel her hand exploring up my arm. Everywhere she touches, my skin burns.
"No catch," she says. "No price. I would only be here to help you get everything you desire."
I stare at her. Her bright red eyes are in my face.
They are psychotic.
There is something aching in me, something raw and grasping and hungry for what she's offering.
I am very, very close to saying yes.
But then–
Her face shifts.
It is not a change of shape, not the flickering instability from before, but something in the way she looks at me, the way her eyes widen just a fraction too much, the way her lips part just a little too eagerly, her body leaning just a little too far forward.
Excitement. A horrible, unrestrained excitement.
The realization slams into me like cold water, an instinctive recoil I barely understand. I swallow, forcing a thin, shaking breath. "I'll, uh. . . " I wet my lips. "I'll think about it."
She does not blink. Her smile stretches wider, just a little too wide. Her red eyes burn into me, not quite blinking, not quite moving. Waiting.
"I will honor that," she says, and the words settle over me like something. . . partial. Barely even final. The air shifts into something new. Not violently, not in some dramatic, spine-snapping way, but subtly, so subtle I wouldn't have noticed if my nerves weren't already screaming. The passing of her words lingers in my chest, stretching out like a shadow at sunset, growing longer, deeper and darker where the sun runs to hide. She sits with perfect posture, hands folded lightly in her lap, every movement- or lack thereof- precise, deliberate. The red of her lips remains untouched, no smearing, no imperfections. She doesn't move like a person, and yet she is sitting across from me like this is nothing but a casual meeting between two old friends.
"I will honor that," she repeats, her voice steady, smooth, as if sealing an invisible contract I never agreed to sign. I adjust in my seat, swallowing thickly, my fingers idly tracing the rim of the cup. The drink still tastes like nothing, but my throat is dry anyway. She watches me, quiet, expectant.
"So," I say, forcing my voice to be casual, as if the atmosphere hasn't just shifted into something heavier, more intimate in a way I don't entirely like. "What happens now? Do we just sit here until I drop dead, or is there an itinerary?"
She chuckles- an airy, amused sound, like a breeze passing through dead branches. "What an interesting way to phrase that, Jessaline Abetta."
"Well, forgive me for not knowing the etiquette of drinking wine with a Goddess."
"Wine?" Her brow lifts, head tilting ever so slightly. "You drink it as wine?"
I glance down at the cup in my hands, at the faint reflection of light against its surface. The liquid moves too much. There are creatures writhing in the cup, dragging their limp bodies up and down the sides.
I set it down with a little more care than before. Her smile twitches, barely noticeable, like she can see exactly what I'm thinking.
"There's something very charming about you, Jesse," she says, her tone light, almost conversational. "You are terribly afraid, yet you try so very hard to keep your head above the water."
I lean back, exhaling sharply. I don't like the idea of any more liquids for a bit. "Yeah, well. It's worked so far."
"Has it now?"
I freeze. The question is simple. Lightly spoken. But it wedges itself between my ribs, winding through the cracks in my resolve, settling there. She props her elbow against the table, resting her chin against the back of her hand.
"You fear me, but that's expected. The unknown is frightening, after all. But what intrigues me is that you fear yourself far, far more than you fear anything I might do to you."
My breath catches. She leans forward slightly, just enough to narrow the space between us.
"Tell me," she says softly, "if you were truly given everything you desired, would you take it? Do you think you'd deserve it?"
I want to say yes.
I want to say no.
But mostly, my head wants to know why she's asking. Why would she take an interest in someone so undeserving? Someone like me? A worm in her cup like me? I shift uncomfortably, willing my voice to sound even.
"Is this, like, a test?"
Her red eyes flicker with something unreadable.
"If I said yes, what do you think would be the correct answer?"
A long silence stretches between us, but she does not seem in any hurry to fill it. I shake my head, rubbing at my temple. "I feel like you already know how I feel and what I want."
"I do."
Her certainty is suffocating. She laces her fingers together, watching me with polite interest, as if waiting to see how long I can hold out before cracking. "That's why I'm offering to help you get it."
I inhale slowly, steadying my nerves. "And you really expect me to believe there's no catch?"
Her smile doesn't waver. "I don't expect you to believe anything."
I exhale, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Then why me?"
A pause.
Then, the answer.
"Because you are so, so very human, and that fascinates me."
There's something so honest about the way she says it, and I hate that it unsettles me more than anything else. She continues, her voice measured, thoughtful. "Humans, despite their fragility, have such a remarkable capacity for longing. You are all driven by it. Wanting to be seen. Wanting to be loved. Wanting to be more."
She gestures vaguely, as if painting the shape of something intangible in the air. "It is a rare thing to be given the opportunity to take everything you long for. Rarer still is the human who hesitates before reaching for it."
She continues on.
"I have a desperate crave to understand the concept of needing. . . I want to know what it is humans mean when they say they long for things."
My fingers twitch against the table.
She sees it.
She smiles.
"My offer. Do think about it," she says, voice velvet-soft, utterly patient.
I know I shouldn't. I *know* I shouldn't.
And yet, I hesitate.
And that, more than anything, seems to delight her.
Her red eyes shine as she tilts her head, expression shifting ever so slightly, her lips parting into a slow, knowing smile.
It is wide, and it is awful. It is the kind of expression that worms its way into the back of your mind, curling up somewhere dark, waiting for the perfect moment to resurface. She watches me for a long moment, then,
"I will honor that," she murmurs, once more.
The words wrap around my tongue like bubble gum.
The words hang there. Thick and silky.
I swallow, though my throat is dry, though my body is screaming at me to stand up, to leave, to end this conversation before it turns into something I cannot undo. She does not blink. She does not lean back. She does not ease the unbearable weight of her presence. Or, maybe she does? That thing before. . . was her. Or it wasn't.
I force myself to look away, exhaling through my nose, trying to find the cracks in this moment where I can slip through, where I can leave before my hesitation becomes permission.
". . . Alright," I mutter, not looking at her. "Then I guess I'll just. . think about it."
Maybe she won't be able to hear my thoughts if I don't make eye contact with her. A silly, silly thought. The chair legs creak slightly as I shift, as I make the smallest motion toward standing, and that's when I feel it again:
Her excitement.
Pure and utter excitement.
Not mine, nor of me.
But, her. So deeply entwined that I can feel it in me, knowing full well that it is not my own. It is not loud. It is not big. But, it is long. It is a pulse in the tiniest flicker of breath, the minute tightening of her fingers, the way her red eyes shine just a fraction too much in the dead light. And that tiny spark is overwhelming. It is the way a flame wavers just before it consumes.
I feel my stomach drop.
I push back from the table, standing too quickly, the chair scraping against the floor. "Right. Well. Thanks for the existential crisis, but I think I'll–"
Her hand twitches. Just a tiny, almost imperceptible movement, as if she had considered reaching for me. She doesn't, but somehow, I can feel her on top of me, crawling over, looking down on me. The suggestion of touch alone is enough to keep that sensation tight in my chest. I don't give her a chance to speak. I turn on my heel, moving, moving, moving, each step carrying the weight of something closing in behind me, something I am not looking at.
The air behind me hums with something expectant.
I do not turn around.
I do not see her, the face absolute and body pure that watches as I walk away. But I feel it. I feel her watching. I feel that terrible, red-eyed, sharp-toothed "smile" curling in the space between my shoulders.
And when I wake–
When I "wake"–
The taste of nothing is still on my tongue.
. . .
Something feels very wrong. I am cold, but I am burning. I have stripped off all my clothes and blankets, and every position feels uncomfortable. I feel as if something wishes to emerge from the backs of my ribs. No pain. Only discomfort. It's most likely just a mental thing. A little block, but I feel undeniably off. No thought feels coherent. I'm not feverish. But I am burning. I feel like I'm melting? Personhood wise
Something is just, very, very wrong. I shiver and melt at the same time.
I hear someone else's voice in my head.
Is it because we moved —-------------- by one day? Is my body going through withdrawal? It reminds me of the —------------- incident, but, without all the pain. Leaning towards it. I have been awfully tired today. If I get worse, I'll tell someone. This must be how drug addicts feel. It's a disgusting, revolting feeling. Will I be able to sleep like this? This hapless art escapes me.
I can't do this. Fuck. My life is so contingent on this fucking —--. My emotions revolve around it. My body revolves around it. My life depends on it. What worth is a life, dependent on a —--? On this art-? This consumption? This pathway of spiritual suicide leads me further down the gullet. All I do is eat. None of these emotions would be here if it weren't for the —---. Even now, it is the —--- talking, not me. It's driving me insane. I have to make more. More art. I can't sleep. Art is my outlet. Heroes do not get happy endings. They make happy endings for others, and give others the ending they will not receive themselves. Art will be my happy ending. I want someone to eat my art. In silence and in rapture.
I fade out from the reaching hand. Their golden eyes gleam, and I cannot help but gaze upon their beauty.
But, the moment they disappear into the dark, I forget what I was trying to hold.
. . .
She wets my forehead with the towel.
I am half-awake, groggily tilting up. My eyes unfocus and focus in again. But, it's her. My mother. Water drips down my cheeks, but she's smiling at me.
Smiling at the water.
"You're awake," she remarks. A cliché comment for the situation.
I can't manage words. It's been too long since I've drank water.
But, she's cold. Refreshingly cold. She helps me sit up, holding my hand with this intensity that feels somewhat peaceable. She hands me a glass of water. I down it in seconds.
Coughing and sputtering, the lining of my lip is all gummy and gross. But, words, I can manage now. "I'm fine."
"Bullshit," she laughs, accidentally tugging too hard on my hand. It hurts. She doesn't notice. "You passed out outside. You're burning up."
"I've had worse."
I cough again. The spit sticks to my tongue.
Androktasiai pats my back.
"I'm here for you. Just take a breather."
But, she's not. She's six feet under, and even further down in Hell because of me.
"What do you want me to say?" I ask.
"Well, let anything out!" she bellows. "I'll listen to it all!"
No you won't. You won't hear any of it. You don't care. If I needed you, you wouldn't be there. You make promises you can't fulfill with me. I can't be upset at you for dying, but you're dead regardless. I stay alive, I stay alive when you ask me to, when you wish me to, but that's selfish to say otherwise, isn't it? I choose to live. I chose that flaw. I chose to run when death followed me. I don't know how I'm meant to believe you when your actions have always showed otherwise. I don't know how I'm meant to believe you when you got sick and left me behind.
But, I don't say that.
I just fall down onto the bed.
Roll over, and pretend to fall asleep. I listen when Androktasiai taps her feet and sits in silence for a moment. I feel the gentle wind when she pets my head. I feel her boots clink against the hardwood floor.
I hear the creak, the gentle shut of an always strong creature's slam, and I hear her sigh when she walks away.
There's someone else out there too.
I know because Androktasiai says, "He's still burning up."
And in response, I hear a voice reply,
"When can I see him?"
I don't listen to the rest of their conversation.
I fall asleep a few moments after, and it all simply disappears.
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