"The 50 Conditions" Anthology
Why did I attempt this outlandish task?
My aim was to set a new world record: namely, the longest time in which one has written a short story (>500 words) every day. My goal? Fifty days.
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Every short is based off of a unique, single-word conceptual prompt (such as "Time", "Fear", "Memory", etc.), which I would have to improvise a plot, vibe, and message for each concept every single day.
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There's some easter eggs and secrets hidden in here too, obscured behind the layers of prose and ideas. So keep your eyes peeled for any... motifs.
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Watch me read these aloud here!
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1. Time
I run my hands through the sands of creation, lifting it, inspecting it, letting it fall.
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The granules push back against my fingers like a silky membrane. Tickling them. Embracing them. Folding over them. And every time I let them go, they fall, returning to how they were before. So perfect in their motion, their fall, so principled, ordered, so supplicated to the rules set out before their descent that it was almost destiny that they would end up in the way they did. Yes, it was destiny. I made it that way.
I rise from the floor of the desert.
I wonder how this universe came about, watching the last of the granules settle in their destined place. I had been granted this infinity, by something beyond, given the tools to shape it, but where had it come from?
I begin to make my way forward, drifting towards the horison. My arms sway by my sides, ghoul-like, my eyes tracing over the liquid splatter of stars on the skyline; a great splash of cerulean that spread from one end of the horison to the other. It bathed the world in a curious light; one sheer, overwhelming, as infinite as the plains before me, yet all so subtle and kind.
The air wraps around my shins as I push forward, almost visible – white and mist-like – pushing against my interference to return to where they were ordered to be.
Just as I designed it to.
I keep on moving, carving out my path through infinity. Movement, stepping from one instant to another. As I do, the sand shifts over itself, so perfect in their motion that they shift over one another in exactly the way I have ordained them to, mixing in such a way that the next granule, the next moment in time, will be exactly as I have designed it, exactly as I have predestined it.
I halt, and so does the movement, the shifting. Back a step, I order time to trace back its path – stilling the moment. The world shifts to concord to my decision, my time. A step forward, lies the future. A step back, lies the past. But, now that I am still, time stills with me.
I bend down once again, inspecting the sands of the universe. In each granule I see a world. A world, lit by strange laughter, odd words, deep sorrow and great joys. I shift my hand through the sand, intentionally rearranging them. And when my hand leaves the earth, it stays. But one granule catches my eye, and an idea catches me. I’ve found it. The missing piece to my grand work.
I pick the granule up, pinching it softly between my thumb and forefinger. Within it, I see a great sadness, a repressed sadness, smothered by empty joys. By the lack of fulfilment. By the curses of the human condition that it has been subjected to. A soul, calling out for something more, something greater.
“You have another purpose in this tapestry,” I say. “Come, fall into place. Mix with the sands around you, O soul, you who are indispensable, you who shall change the fabric of this world.” I nod, and place it elsewhere. I push forward once more, and the moments before me shift to accord to my design. Small changes at first. But as I walk, the changes, like the rising of a tidal wave, grow ever more pronounced. The great tapestry, the great symmetry, falling into its perfect place.
I stop, stilling the world in a moment once again. I reach down, inspecting another granule, another soul, another place. Another mountain, another planet, another granule. I pick it up, lift it, and speak to it those same holy words. “You have another purpose in this tapestry,” I say. “Come, fall into place. Mix with the sands around you, O soul, you who are indispensable, you who shall change the fabric of this world.” And so, I place it elsewhere, watching the granule mix and shift over its new surroundings.
But here, I stop, and take in the horison once again. The great, great expanse, the great tapestry, the great symmetry of time, spreading infinitely before me and infinitely after. I take in breath, and look back down to inspect the sands of the moment I have designed. I place my fingers into it, letting the silky feeling warm them.
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I run my hands through the sands of creation, lifting it, inspecting it, letting it fall.
2. Fear
With every step I take, It only gets closer.
I break into a run, releasing my hands from my cloak pockets, dashing closer and closer towards the great, black cathedral in the City’s centre. The sky, empty of stars, moons, or suns, shrouds the cathedral in a wispy crimson mist, all-enveloping; all-consuming. Every time my foot slams into the floor, the floor seems to slam into me back – malice leaking into the reverberation of my shins, my knees, my thighs – anger seeping from the very earth I stood upon. I set my jaw, achingly hard, and turn down an alleyway.
The darkness of the City truly surrounds me further as I push deeper into the shadow. Around me, orbs of Light pop in and out of existence – a vast array of harsh colours, all following me as I run. They seem to mix with the voices within the darkness, whispering, hissing, scolding, slowly closing in on me from every direction. The very buildings either side of me seem to lean towards me, constricting, strangling the alleyway like wrists curled around a throat.
I scrunch my eyes closed, pushing forward – but in the back of my eyes, I see It.
I dig my feet deeper and deeper into the stone at my feet, pushing myself faster and faster and faster, relentlessly panting to satiate my lungs. My heart screams; slamming against my chest over and over and over, so loud in my ears that I’m sure It could have heard it too. I break free of the claustrophobic alleyway, back out onto a main-street.
It’s filled with people. Breathing, chatting, laughing, all whipped up into a cacophonous frenzy, all around, omnipresent, inescapable. My eyes scatter across the surroundings as I draw myself to a sudden halt. I feel unease lick at the base of my neck, but my entire body aches at the sight of the crowd, shivering, shaking, trembling. I look around, harder, trying to spot something. I see a shift in a shadow, and I spin back around.
I scrunch my eyes closed, pushing forward – but in the back of my eyes, I see It.
I dash back down the alleyway, swamped by a sweet, almost feverous pang in my chest – an emotion I cannot identify. No time. I need to escape. The unease still clings to my nape, ever-present, ever breathing down my neck, salivating, baring its fangs. I push on, eventually breaking through the constricting alleyway and back out onto the opposing main-street that lead up to the cathedral.
The lamp-lit surroundings did little to unveil anything, unveil anyone who was chasing me. I did not stop to let It catch up. I shot back down the road, back the way I had come, stretching my limbs as far as they would allow. My face screeches with the pain of holding up my brow, my legs scream with the pain of exertion, my heart aches with the pain of the knowledge of predators in every unlit corner, all of it flooding my brain, mercilessly beating against it until it throbbed and bled and scattered.
As if by muscle-memory, I fiddle in my cloak pocket, whipping out a sweat-lathered golden key. I almost slam into the door to the house, fiddling with the lock as I glance repeatedly over my shoulder. It was getting closer, God, It was closer than ever. The key refuses to go in its place, the place it had returned to thousands of times, only shivering back and forth on either side of its hidey-hole, not daring go in. I grit my teeth harder, bobbing my leg, stabilising my wrist and forcing it in. It clicks. I turn it. The door opens. I tumble inside.
I scrunch my eyes closed, pushing forward – but in the back of my eyes, I see It.
“There you are.” It says, its voice sweet and terrifying. “You didn’t have to go running off like that.” It moves toward me as I peel my eyelids apart, the impression on the backs of them mixing with the figure in real life. My jaw quivers as I attempt at speech, as I wriggle away from It, as I shake my head, but none of it matters. “We were just discussing our finances, is all. Come on. You have a responsibility to contribute to this family, too.”
Those words fill me with disgust. With terror. With fear. A tumour seems to cling to the inside of my skull; drip-feeding my brain poison, ounce by ounce, throb by throb, ache by ache. I scrunch my eyes closed, clutching senselessly at my hair, and begin a low moan, rocking back and forth.
“What are you afraid of?” It says. “You haven’t gone to work in a fortnight. What’s wrong?” Tears leak from my eyes. “You don’t have to go in tomorrow. But really, please do tell me what’s wrong with it. Why can’t you go?” Its words fill with kindness, with a deep sorrow. A false sorrow. Yes, a false kindness. I know it’s false. It makes me feel this way, after all. “I’m sorry. I really am. I just want what’s best for the both of us.”
I scrunch my eyes closed, pushing forward – but in the back of my eyes, I see It.
I fling myself from the aching floorboards, and dash back out the door into the unending abyss of night, letting the feeling of the wind rushing past my ears as I run wash over me, wash through me, dragging away all pain, all fear, all memory, all responsibility, all of this sickening, dull life. The unease still licks at my spine, no matter how fast I run. I keep my eyes closed, imagining something better. A grassy meadow. A sky-bound city of whites and blues. A great, expansive ocean.
I crash into something, and I slam to the floor, my face punching straight into the cobblestone. My mouth fills with sawdust and splinters. I open my eyes. I’m lying in a disgruntled heap, having ran into and shattered an empty storage box lying outside another person’s home.
I shift over, spitting the wood from my mouth, and my muscles give in. I lie there, panting, eyes locked onto the sky. The unease still envelops me, from everywhere, all around, but It remains in my peripheries; forever getting closer, but never quite reaching me.
I scrunch my eyes closed, panting harder – but in the back of my eyes, I see It.
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3. Memory
The man of shadow swarmed the castle’s base, alone, a singular soldier amidst a searing white universe.
The castle was close, closer than ever, shrouded in the same onyx of his mist-like body. He pressed on, tugging in breath after breath. He clutched the bayonet in his hands tighter, struggling with the fever of pain that followed him as he sprinted across the endless expanse between him and his goal. His legs ached, his mind was exhausted, yet, on the horison, was his solace. He had to keep pushing forward. He was almost there.
The great gap between the man and his castle was indistinct; the earth that he pushed across hidden behind a thin membrane of white water. It splashed as his feet tore down on and left the water’s surface, the sprinkles of the liquid as pure and blinding as the light of the sun. It was dappled by a rainbow, glorious and bright, but what lay beneath the surface was never revealed to the man. He felt it, however, beneath his shadowy boots; a kind of mould, the type that was sticky and grimy enough to attach itself to the soles of his feet.
As he ran, he felt a distant weakness begin to build up in his hands; as if they were unsupported. Why, why would they be unsupported? He looked down at his hands, briefly stopping. Black mist filled them, nothing else should have been in them. So, why did it feel like something was missing from them? The white all around made it hard to think; fogging his mind. He had the impression that he had something to carry. Like he was holding something, just a moment ago.
He shook his head, recollected his breath, and began the charge again.
The castle was definitely growing closer – by the moment, by the step. His blackened eyes darted around, scanning the horison for anything else, anyone else, aside from the castle of shadow and the imposing, white mountain to its right. Nothing. Only him and the expanse. But as he got closer, some idea thickened in his mind; not a thought, not a sentence, or a set of words, but an impression, a feeling. As if his brain was being probed by a nagging finger. The feeling only got stronger as he got closer to the castle, but something held the feeling back. He blinked, and it receded, swamped by the blinding white all around. A muscle tugged tight in his forehead, as if he had forgotten something. He raised his singular arm from his side, inspecting the asymmetry of his body, briefly stopping. He found himself wondering why people were born with only an arm on one’s right side. Strange, but the white all around made it hard to think; fogging his mind.
He shook his head, recollected his breath, and began the charge again.
The castle had grown from just a pinprick at the end of the sky to a towering body that pierced the heavens. It was literally made of mist, black mist. The man looked down at his body; his body made of the same mist, the same familiar darkness. He found it difficult to stay upright as he ran. He was, by virtue of how the human body was built, constantly on the verge of stumbling too far forward – and had nothing to halt his fall if he did. But the man’s eyebrows furrowed, and he slowed, briefly stopping. He looked to either side of his body, looking at his shoulders each in turn. He felt, ever so strangely, that he was missing something there. That he’d lost something; a something that was supposed to be there beyond just the stumps at the upper corners of his torso. The white all around made it hard to think; fogging his mind. But that idea was silly anyway. That was like saying people had two legs.
He shook his head, recollected his breath, and began the hop again.
He bounced on his singular leg, getting closer to the castle. Strangely, again, he felt as if he could be going faster. That he had been moving faster, just a moment ago. He looked up at the castle, and it seemed further away, as if it were back at the end of the horison yet again. The man spat curses at the white void, continuing his crawl along the slimy and grey surface of water that hid the earth below it. Strange, it seemed a lot brighter a moment ago. It lapped at his chin as he struggled forward, towards the eventual goal on the horison.
Wait, where was he going? He blinked, looking out upon the great expanse of murky grey before him, scanning for something. That something prodded at him, whispering to him distantly, but he couldn’t tell from where. He felt a great swell of pain awaken in his chest. He stopped his crawl, swamped in the middle of an unending, unrelenting universe. He wriggled around, looking back at the path he had taken. It was empty. Not black, not white, not colour, nor anything that existed; just nothingness. Eradication. Entropy. Nonexistence.
The world darkened.
The substance that he lay in thickened.
And a figure walked up to him, out of the nonexistence. A figure, built with the same misty black building blocks that he was built of too. It walked up to him, bending down, smiling. But the man couldn’t make out its face. He struggled, strained, reached out to grab on to the words that left its indiscernible lips, but it was all lost from him the moment the words left them. Each time he blinked, he forgot it was there, and was shocked anew when he saw it.
“Who… who are you?” The man asked, shifting over towards the little girl that sat aside his hospital bed. She shivered, a jolt making its way up her spine.
“It’s Alice.” She said, pain riddling her voice. But she kept it as still and reassuring as possible.
“I… I don’t… pardon?” The old man asked, weak and frail in voice. “Could you.. er…”
“I’m Alice.” She repeated, again. His eyes were traced on to her, utter confusion flooding them. A small twitch of his brow. A small tugging at the corner of his wrinkled lips.
“I…” His breath caught, and he coughed. “…pardon?”
Alice took hold of the man’s hand, clutching it as tight as she would dare.
“I’m your—” She began. Pausing, she took in a short breath. “I’m Alice. I’ve popped in to say hello.”
“Oh… how kind…” But he said it as if it were a question, unsure. “Sorry, who are… who are you again?”
The little girl raised his feeble hand to her forehead, feebly sobbing, silently sobbing. The lines around his eyes crinkled, pain welling up behind them.
“I know you… don’t… don’t I?” He blinked. “Please… please tell me… who are you? I need to know.” He sucked in a meek, shivery breath. “I… I need to know.”
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4. Love
The language flowers speak is much more complex than a human’s.
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It is a lot more refined, articulate, and graceful; they weave together meaning in ways that words could not contain. The dialects are so varied, so vast, so full and hearty that no human could possibly capture it on their feeble tongues.
The woman sat in the field, embraced by the cluster of flowers all around her. She leaned back, resting deeper into them, letting the sweet feelings of their petals brush against her skin. She soaked in the unique feeling embedded within their contact. They were such incredibly precise feelings, ones that pierced through the skin and warmed her heart.
She spread her arms through the bed, swarmed by the great array of colours. Tulips of all kinds, crimson, ultramarine, all the colours of the rainbow. She traced her eyes on to the horison, so far away that it felt endless. It was bright, blue as a shallow ocean, and the moon distantly twinkled within it.
She was in adoration of her surroundings, completely enraptured by it, to the point she barely even viewed herself as anything beyond just an observer. She had been here forever, and will be here forever. Lying here, in peace, undisturbed.
The ticklish feeling of the petals mixed with a memory; the memory of a person she once loved. Those feelings mixed, knitted as well as if they were the same species. She could not remember their face, their name, age, occupation or voice, but what she did feel when she memorised this figure was that of a deep admiration. A feeling that bubbled in her chest, flooding her face with a bouncing, joyous pride. Her eyes crinkled at the edges, the happiness so great that she couldn’t suppress the chuckle lobbying to escape her lips.
They were long-gone. Or, rather, she knew she’d never see them again. But the thought didn’t cross her mind, nor did she care, nor did it really matter in any meaningful way – she had the memory, and she would enjoy this feeling for as long as she could. She loved whoever it was, whether it was herself, someone else, or something else entirely.
The flowers whispered in her ears, bristling up against them. They tickled her, sending short, sweet pangs up through her spine. She nodded, and slowly lifted from the ground.
She bounced forwards, down the sloping, undulating hill that she had been lying on, down into the great flowery expanse at the bottom of the great basin. She skipped along, the abundance of flowers increasing as she went. They felt at her ankles, growing up her shins.
But as she got closer and closer to the centre, she grew more drowsy. Her senses slowly began to dull, leaving only the joy of her step and the desire to reach the basin’s centre. So, she pushed on, pledging to allow herself a nap once she arrived.
Once she reached it, she staggered, stopping. With a slightly increased breath, she looked down at the patch of flower-less grass. It was carved out of the surrounding cluster in the shape of a perfect circle, the golden blades of grass cut; but showed evidence of growing back, as if it had been cut only recently.
She lowered herself to that ground, placing her hands against the floor. She let the grass knit between her fingers, allowing it to numb the tiring feeling in their own language, their own words.
She lay on her back now, staring up at the sky. In her peripheries, a cottage lay on the horison. The flowers were tall and kind, warm in their gazes, homely in their bristle within the breeze. The sun hung directly overhead, looking down at her also. A kind light. She reached into the sky, blocking the sun’s light from her face, allowing it to fold over and in between her fingers. Nostalgia swarmed her – a strange, source-less nostalgia. But that feeling was a good one. She let it soak in to her. It was peaceful here, in this moment.
She felt as if there was a time in her past that was more torrential. More horrid, terrifying, difficult on the heart. It left her with claw-marks, but she had no memory to recall it in any way that mattered. But she knew, in the end of it all, it had been washed away. And now she was here, content, and she could stay here until the end of time.
She let her hand fall to her side, and her eyes slowly dripped closed. And, briefly, before she slipped away into dreams, her vision filled with the ripe colour of an apple, and her nostrils filled with the faint scent of tulips.
The flowers that surrounded her on all sides, all throughout the grandiose basin, hummed to her; a great lullaby, a great comfort. The memories of another time, another place, another world. And the basin she had been gifted coddled her, kissed her, rocked her in its cot, allowing that great blossoming flower to grow and prosper within her. For she was to soon understand the language of the flowers. Soon, she would understand it all. What the flowers really are.
A zephyr blew across, in between, and out of the petalled flowers and the yellow grass. She eased back, lulled further into sleep, a small, content smile on her face.
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5. War
A frothing sound bubbles within my skull, only increasing as I look over the battlefield. Well, if you could call it that.
“What’re you sayin’, ey?” Brakkr says, standing idly to my side with his war-axe resting on his shoulder. “This’ll be an easy one, I bet. How much you wanna bet on not losing anyone this time ‘round?”
I follow his gaze, locking on to a small village in the distance. The part of the Territories we were to claim. My jaw tightened slightly, but not enough for my comrade-in-arms to notice.
It was a drought-ridden expanse; a plain vast and sprawling with desert-dust, pathways of wind tracing over it as if in a lulled sleepwalk. Within that wind, highlighted by the darkness of night, hovered minuscule specks of light – blue and as bright as stars. I wasn’t sure what they were, but I didn’t have the space in my mind to ponder it. Not right now.
“Ullar, mate?” Brakkr asked, snapping me out of my thoughts. I nodded absentmindedly, almost waving him off. “Man,” he started, a heaviness to his tone. “You know, there’s been a scary number of blokes that have abandoned ship these days. Even when we’re so close. Like, there’s barely anything to be ‘fraid of no more. Right? Why’re they even doin’ it?” I nod, again. “Well, I know you’d never do something like that. I mean, when’t came to volunteering for the State, you were first in line and draggin’ us along with ya’. Right?”
“Sure.” I say, finally, my voice a tad more shaky than I thought it would be. “We’re almost there.” It felt as if I was telling myself that.
A horn ripped across the battlefield, calling us to arms as it had many times before. Too many. I shake my head, trying to prevent the numb frothing sound from growing any larger.
I follow Brakkr and unionise with the troops at the base of the mountain on the other side of the cracked plains. Our Commander begins to bellow for our attention.
“This will be a small siege, lads! But we’ll take it with full force, no matter who may live there. We know what the militias are like, hiding behind their civilians. Can’t give them armour, can we?!” A cheer rose from the ground. The sound in my ears only intensified. Tinnitus? “But great warriors of the State! We charge on all that oppose our continued existence, no matter the cost!” No. That wasn’t it. The sound was something else. “These recusants want us dead, our land usurped! How many times in the past have we let them claim our great land, boot us out, shove our faces through the grime and muck and putridity of their oppression? We shall not let it happen again! Not once more shall we fall. Not once more!” And with that, an even mightier cheer erupted from the crowd.
They began to assemble, and my heart rocked violently in my chest.
“Squadron Leader Ullar.” I hear the voice from my right, and I turn, almost too hastily, to face him. My under-soldier. “Orders?”
I stare at him for a moment, almost not processing his words. My mind churns, retches, barfs against the inside of my skull, but I push it down, and refocus on reality. I can’t let this all get to me.
“We take the front.” I say, marching towards the very spearhead of the battalion. My Squadron follows me. Every step I take displaces small splashes of water, a cluster of sand, a loose rock or two; all cast aside to make way for my path. No. No, I need to stop thinking like this. We’ll get nowhere at this rate. We need to do this. It’s for the good of our State. If we don’t do this, my life, our lives, the lives of my family and the people I love, they’ll be reduced to cinders.
I intensify my walk, striding to the side of the Commander.
“Did I give you orders to accompany me, Squadron Leader?” The Commander asked.
“No, sir-upon-high.” I shake my head. “I merely wish to survey the situation at the head of the battalion for this assault.” I clutch the hilt of my sword, the one I had unknowingly drawn, tight enough that the metal could have shattered.
The Commander paused, eyes not leaving the skyline.
“Permission granted. Lead your Squadron and begin the assault.” He raised his golden lance high into the air, signalling to the rest of the troops. I began my sprint, before He could order the rest of us forward.
I barrelled across the land, barrelling, barrelling, barrelling forward, my legs as light as feathers and my heart as heavy as an anchor. A fever was whipped up within my chest, within my legs, invading every corner of my being, latching on to it and not letting go. I kept my eyes locked on the horison, ignoring the village teasing at my vision. The sky was red, crimson, like blood. It flooded the battlefield like water filling a gap. I pushed through one of those gusts of wind, and felt the small specks of light brush past my face; they were calming, soothing, as tranquil as could be – but that only worsened the storm that was brewing within me. These people, this place… are they not the same as us? Where else in this damned world do they have to go?
I shook myself free of those thoughts, doubling my pace, my sword trailing loosely behind me.
I was on the outskirts of the village now. My Squadron trailed far, far behind me, but I kept up my pace despite them. I could make out the people’s faces now. Their calm spreading into horror, like the stretching and ripping of flesh. Children. The sick. The old. Those were the only types of people I could make out. Were they all that was left?
My sword shivered in my grip, but I bolstered it by placing my other on its hilt as well. I push forward, into the village, darting in between huts. I saw a woman. She was running away from me. Screaming, flailing, yelling a name. No. I couldn’t let her call for help. For reinforcements. They’ll kill our men. I chased after her. I cut her down.
She fell, limp and powerless, to the floor, impacting it with a great thud. A great mass of black-and-crimson leaked out of her, bubbling out of her, leaving her last mark on the earth. I stagger back, vomit clogging up my throat. My mind reeled. My heart thuds. My eyes spin, trying everything, searching for anything, any sign of life, anything to look at that wasn’t the woman I had killed, cold, lying on the floor.
“M—Mother… Mother!” A young voice cried, hysterically. The source of it turned a corner; a little girl. The roar of the battalion groaned and churned, getting closer and closer to the village. And along with it, so did the roaring, bubbling sound behind my ears, now ceaseless, scathingly warm, unbearably loud. “Y—you…” She crumpled to her knees, her hands raised as if she were to put them on her mother, to perhaps shake her awake – but she stopped, leaving them hanging in mid-air. “Why did you do this?!” Her voice was a sneer, a snarling rasp, hissy like a snake’s. She snapped her head to her side, looking directly at me. Directly into my soul. I jolted back. “Why, why, why?! Why are you all doing this? Why are you killing us? Why did you kill my mother?! What have we ever done to you?!”
“You’ve threatened us!” I find myself saying, the last string connecting me to my sanity quivering, splitting. “You’re living on our land, claiming that its yours, that we have no right to even exist!”
“When have I ever said that, in my entire God-forsaken life?!” She screamed, tears pelting down her cheeks. “When did my Mother ever say that? My father? My cousins?”
“It’s not about you!”
“It very much is when you’re butchering us!” Her eyes were searing hot, a blazing, deep blue. “I don’t care what people have done in the name of us, I’ve done nothing! I was just born here, and you’re taking everything, everything, everything away from me! How is this fair?”
My mind stumbled, reeled for rebuttals, but none came.
“U—Until we eradicate every revolutionary in the Territories,” I repeated the Commander’s words. “We must not stop for anyone. We must not allow ourselves to be subjugated again.”
“You talk about subjugation? What kind of hypocrisy is this? You’re joking, right?” She pointed to her dead mother. “Who here is being subjugated?! You, with the sword? What world do you live in?!” She stood from the ground, pressing towards me. I raised a shivering arm, lifting my blade. “I’ve done nothing to deserve this. No matter what other people may have done in our names, they don’t speak for us. Maybe if you weren’t going around killing innocent mothers, maybe then people like them wouldn’t have to exist!” She nodded, shoving her face in mine. “Yes. If it wasn’t for you, nobody would have died. Nobody! Not even your own people! That’s the responsibility you take on when your people have enough steel to craft a sword!”
My heart seems to stop. It doesn’t beat, for too many seconds. My world comes crashing down, as if pushed off the precipice of a cliff. The roaring behind my ears became deafening, almost drowning out her words. She clutched at my uniform, digging her nails deep into the pockets on either breast.
“Just… kill me. God, let it end.” She whimpered. She looked up at me, finally. Her lips trembled, her buck-teeth shaking, her eyes unbearably deep, unbearably hearty, unbearably human. “But I hope you know that no matter how virtuous your actions may be, no matter how many lives you’ll save by doing this, you’re still going to hell along with us.”
My strength left me, and my sword arm fell limp to my side. The bubbling sound now fills with a renewed heartbeat, one that slams against the inside of my skull over, and over, and over.
“Do it! Fucking end my life if you’re going to! You’ll see my face again when you get cast down to the lakes of fire anyway, might as well speed the process up—”
“I won’t.” I said. The crashing of feet outside the village grew louder. They’re all almost here. I can see my Squadron turning the corner, looking towards me with confusion in their eyes. Friends, trainees, people who’s lives I have witnessed from birth until the present, and some that could say the same for me.
But, I… can’t.
I looked down at the mother’s corpse. The blood’s flow was slowly stopping, her face cold, stark, and pale. I looked down at my sword, lathered and dripping with that slippery crimson liquid. I looked at the girl, reduced to her knees, sobbing until more of her face was covered with tears than what wasn’t. I increased the grip on my sword, anew. I look back at my Squadron, approaching the village in a light jog.
I step out, moving towards them.
Behind them, the yelling bodies of war shift, slither and bellow at the crimson night.
I reach the outermost hut.
Their axes, swords, shields, all raised high, lances, spears, bows lofted with pride. I was once one of them, as vivacious and war-hungry as a rabid wolf.
I place my other hand on the hilt of my blade, raising it, readying myself for battle. A stern look creeps on to my brow. And I pledge something to myself, in that moment before the torrent of warfare slams into me.
I pledged to never kill another human being. Never again. I pledged to end the cycle. I pledged to end the pain.
​
6. Silence
“Who are you, then?” I asked the faceless man that was sat across from me. The movement of the train rumbled beneath us, filling the silence. The man does not blink, for he has no eyes – not a mouth to speak, not eyes to look, but somehow I can feel his gaze on my face. “You’re obviously no human. But if so, your outfit sucks.” I joke, managing a small puff of a laugh. There came no response. He didn’t even move. My teeth rubbed against one another. “What, you unsatisfied with my performance? Can’t say that’s a regular occurrence for me.” I try again, but still, no response comes. “Come on, dude. Give me something.” I rest my elbows on the table in front of me, clutching my forehead in my palm. “Long day, man. Long-ass fuckin’ day.” I knead my skull. Still, there comes no response. “You not gonna listen to me, huh? Just gonna sit there, are you?” I pull at strings, looking for a joke to crack, but none comes. A well of shame envelops me. “If you’re gonna say anything, answer this.” I drag my hands down from my forehead to my eyes, kneading them ever harder. “Does any of this have any meaning? I mean, sure, I enjoy myself from time to time. Have a drink. Crack a joke. But don’t I deserve a li’l something more?” My eyes trace over the small lines of lighter wood in the table, within the sea of dark brown. “I… fuckin’ hate the every day man. Screw Camus. Screw Sisyphus. I hate to sound like an old-timer, or some stand-up bloke gone rusty, but when I’m sober life is shit. When I get too drunk, life is shit. Man, if you’re something from beyond, like, some kind of angel from the Bible or whatever, tell me. What’s God’s plan? Is there anything in it for me? Is there any logic or consistency or reason for it all?” I sink into my seat, lying back, letting the man enter my vision once more—
He’s gone. Like he was never there in the first place.
A thought springs to mind, a joke, as it always does. “What, gone to file the complaint to the Big Man Himself? I don’t think he has a great track record in customer service, but go for it.” Silence remains after my words. Not a chorus of laughter, not the noise I need to drown the world out. Nothing. Nothing but silence.
I look out the window to my left. The world is dark, the early breaths of morning taking hold of the world. I can vaguely see trees moving past as the train rumbles forward, outlined by a foggy blue paintbrush.
I wonder if it had anything to say, that man. Maybe it wasn’t silent, maybe I didn’t give it time to speak. Or maybe it didn’t need to say anything.
“Man…” I ruffled my hair with a gust of strength, trying to lift myself out of the rut. “I need some damn sleep, I do.”
​
7. Dreams
If eyes are the portal to the soul, then what does the world beyond that spy-hole look like?
I had been exploring the vast, indecipherable land for what felt like an eternity, the colours shifting, swirling, mixing together before dispersing, redefining itself, the world switching to a new font every time I blinked. A dream, that’s what it was. An indecipherable fog of meaning. My thoughts had been slow, but at the same time I could intuit the meaning of everything around me. In the same way one doesn’t need to think about the words of their mother tongue when listening to people talk, I hadn’t needed to process it. It was a strange sensation. An irritating one. One that granted me the knowledge of this dreamscape I’d been thrust in to, but not enough to articulate it.
It felt good though, in a way. The one thing I was able to put into words was that this was me. In some way, I knew that this world was a construction of my mind, of the daily life I’d hated so much.
From out of the flashing colours and bubbling roars of sound, had emerged a great tempest; one that tore the sky asunder, grand, glorious, world-shattering. It took on the ever-changing colours of the world around it, and it tore across the land towards me. It barrelled across the land, carving its way across the sands of the desert. In retrospect, I have to say that it was awe-inspiring. The power of my soul. Even if dreams are hallucinations, that capacity for feeling lies within me, largely untapped.
As the tornado swallowed me, I was cast into the air. I remember the air slamming against my skin harshly, ripping into me, shattering my bones. Yet, as I dissolved into the storm, it felt like I was merging with that great power; opening myself up to it, letting myself become it.
Such a great feeling. All the colours, all my emotions, all my memories, loves, losses, everything, all had been pooled into me in that instant.
I had blinked awake, returning to the drabs of my bed. Sweat clung to my nape. My chest slowly rose and fell with my breath. And that strange feeling petered out slowly, but the echoes of it remained trapped in my heart.
All around me was the pallid greys of my room, unlit by lamp-light. Looking back at it, it was at that point in the day that I would be overwhelmed by disappointment. Reality would slam into me like a punch to the gut. But this time, it was different.
I went about my life a bit differently, from then on. Sure, I was still disenamoured with the every day. There were times I wanted for it to be over, times I wanted something more. But every time, the memory of the storm broke through those feelings; it woke me up, kept me alive. Perhaps there isn’t a point to it. Perhaps the destination this world is destined to go down ultimately has nothing to do with me. Perhaps it has no real destination that anyone could derive meaning from. That’s a very real possibility. But in the end, that doesn’t matter to me either. I witnessed beauty in its truest form. The source of all joy, wonder, and awe, comes from the human soul. It’s the human soul that allows me to feel these things. No matter how torrential, destructive, morbid or unbearable, it’s so unequivocally grand and powerful, so much so that I couldn’t go a day without loving it. I loved my sadness. I loved my pain.
They say dreams are there to tell you something. Maybe, in that case, God did answer my prayers.
​
8. Fate
The noose hung before me, swinging idly. The distant moans and cries rang out from the crowd beyond it, hoarse. Each person, every man, woman, and even the little children with eyes wide, innocent and curious – were salivating at the idea of my death. They were here to witness my execution, of course, and were happy about it. Ironic, really. You’d think this time would be better spent mourning the person I’d supposedly killed. The black magic I’d supposedly conjured.
I hadn’t killed, nor was I a witch. Believe me when I say that.
The soldiers dragged me, numb as a stiff leg, towards the rope. I wondered, briefly, whether there was anything I could do after that point. What possible scenario could allow for me to survive this? A pardon from the King would do it, I’m sure. But he’s had enough of me. That wouldn’t work. Was there something I, myself, could do to prevent this? What potential string of words would prevent my neck from snapping? I suppose trying to talk your way out of suffocation won’t do much. But that was the situation I was in.
The cheers erupted anew when I was thrust on to the stool. I made no attempt to resist it, for what point was there? They had the swords, not me. One grabbed the noose, and brought it down around my neck. It sat there, numbly, bristling up against the skin of the neck below my chin, closing in on my throat. A spinning feeling overtook me; my mind reeling at the sudden realisation that this was the end. That soon, they would kick the stool out beneath me without warning, I’d plummet, and then it would be over.
I’d never breathe again. I’d never laugh again. I’d never drink again. I’d never eat again. I’d never be able to make my own choices, go where I wanted to go, live how I wanted to live – because life would’ve been ripped away from me.
I swallowed, and nausea followed the saliva’s path down the back of my throat. I looked down, vertigo teasing at my peripheries. The crowd’s faces were grotesque in that moment. Well, perhaps not – perhaps if it had been seen at a fencing match, it would’ve been appropriate. But here I was, sick as a dog, moments away from my neck snapping, and glee entered the watcher’s eyes.
I wondered if this was how prisoners felt when they were sentenced. I found myself sympathising for those recusants and outlaws in society, whether they were innocent or guilty. Because no matter what they did or said to try and escape their punishments, even if they changed, spun their life around, dedicated themselves to service of the King from the very core of their souls – it wouldn’t matter. They’d still suffer. That’s the jurisdiction Justice has. But should guilt truly curse a convict, if they are no longer the same person that committed the crime? In that moment, at least, before my death, I didn’t think so.
It was a difficult thought to articulate; but with this fate looming before me, and my past pushing me forwards with a dagger at my back, my present was utterly helpless. Yes, there was nothing I could do. Nothing at all.
The noose tightened around my neck, setting firmer in place.
Fate sure is a cruel thing when dictated by the angry hearts of men.
The tips of my toes lost their footing, vertigo enveloping them, and the noose sharply tugged on my jaw, pain erupting harshly—
​
9. Loss
The city in the sky was crumbling, as if it were shedding its skin. Or rather, like something was skinning it. Rock and concrete stripped away, wind digging into it, dissolving it, eradicating it.
The sky around it was a spectral, glimmering expanse of the purest, greatest blue I had ever seen. It was so far away, so open, that I was painfully aware of how it cradled the whole world in its embrace.
I watched the city crumble from a lonely peak atop a mountain – a mountain, tall enough the pierce the clouds, the rocky complex almost shimmering under the light of the two suns. The world was so incredibly bright in that moment, when I stood above the clouds. The suns were encircled by a gleaming array of colours; refracted rainbows piercing my vision no matter which direction I looked in.
In a way, it was rather cruel. Sure, the days were long, but the nights – the times for rest, grief, and mourning – were few and far between.
A great melancholy teased at the inside of my nose. It drilled at my ears, stabbed at the inside of my throat, scraped at my eyes. My lips trembled at the sight of the city, but I didn’t dare look away. No. I must keep my eyes open.
The world continued to mercilessly tear away at the monolith of a city. It spun now, getting weaker and smaller by the moment. And no matter how much my heart leapt or slammed against my chest, no matter how close I would get to the precipice of the mountain, every fibre of my being screaming out in protest – it wouldn’t stop. It didn’t even slow. The force that tore the city apart was ineffable, impersonal, inhuman.
I had only heard of the city. This was my first time seeing it in full. But even so, seeing something so callously destroyed like that was unbearable.
My mind flooded with him.
I bit the thought down violently, setting my teeth with a harsh clench. I blinked hard, attempting to reset my expression. The small bed of tears hanging in the bottoms of my eyelids meekly trickled out of their hidey-holes.
I focused on the great, expansive sky before me; the dual stars in the sky, the glorious blue, the endless spread of clouds below me. It was an utterly beautiful sight, completely, utterly beautiful. I wished I could see it with him. Sit here, joke, laugh, play word games—
No. Stop. Pain exploded behind my eyes, and the trails of tears strengthened with a burst of renewed vivacity. I needed to stop thinking like that. I could feel my mind swirling, spinning, shedding itself, like the floating city above me, no possibility or hope of respite anywhere. Not the suns, not the sky, not the clouds – nothing. They did nothing to soothe me. If anything, they hurt me more.
The city was on its last legs now; a mere needle of concrete among a sea of glorious, ecstatic blue. That sky seemed to envelop the city, swallowing it, digesting it, so that it would never be seen again.
It was too much to bear.
I roared into the uncaring abyss, falling to my hands and knees on the precipice, my throat and lungs straining to create the protest that escaped through my mouth. The muscles in my neck stressed, as did the skin of my face, but I did not stop. I let it rip my throat asunder – I let one pain mask the other. My gut churned, my stomach spat and retched, and no solace came.
He was dead. It was over.
The city finally dissolved fully, the final chunks of rock dispersing into that great, glorious sky. That great, cruel sky.
​
10. Identity
If, over time, you replace each part of a ship – hull by hull, wheel by wheel, plank by plank – at the end of it, is it still the same ship?
I drifted down the road, down the undulating cobble expanse that lead to the exit of the great city. It was dark all around, a strange, wispy veil of blue fog disturbing the black of the night above. It hung all around, occasionally daring to reach down and weave in between the passersby like the prying finger of some curious beast. As I walked, people barrelled past me in the opposite direction; making their way to the centre of the city. They moved as one great, heaving mass, all storming, almost mindlessly, ahead. Yet, I merely sauntered, swayed, danced around, and was thus pronounced as I slowly descended the hill everyone else climbed.
I couldn’t make out their faces if I wanted to.
Lamplight struck the cobble beneath me, green and slithery, clashing with the great blue overhead. Everything around me felt more and more familiar as I passed, as if I were tracing my thumb along the ridges on my palm, but I couldn’t recognise it as I could my arms or my legs; it was strangely vague, but I knew that I had been here before. The wispy blue fog grew stronger, thicker, more overpowering the further down the hill-like street I went, and with it the number of people barging past me dwindled also.
It suddenly struck me that I was looking for something. There was something I was searching for, hidden amidst the mist. What was it? The obscuring blue seemed to tease and giggle at me. Dancing around me, knitting through my legs, under my arms, growing thicker and thicker by the step. I continued forwards however, steeling my step into a march.
Soon, as I went, the world was completely clasped by that fog. I was merely feeling around a strange sea of blue, following only an instinct. The same way one would retrace their steps after a long journey.
I felt around in the mist, knowing that I was getting closer to it. Whatever brought me here – a subconscious desire, or a conscious need to find what I was looking for – that part of me knew it was close. My eyes scanned my uniformly cerulean surroundings, helplessly looking for something where there was no changes in the environment at all.
Suddenly, I felt the urge to drop down, so I did. I planted my hand on the floor—
I felt something beneath my palm. I looked down, and the uniformity of the surroundings was broken slightly by what looked to be a crystalline shard of ruby. It was deep and spectral, as red as a heart, and I knew that it was what I was looking for. I brought it closer to my face, inspecting it. A strange feeling overcame me, one I could not recognise in that moment, but I know now that it must have been nostalgia. It broke through the sea of amnesia, it filled the hole where my memories should be, and with that, it melded into my hand. A sharp pain rang out, distantly, in my palm, but it quickly dissipated as a set of images flashed through my mind.
An outstretched hand. A flash of golden hair. The trees, the bark, the golden grass. A lamp-lit ring. A desk of parchment and ink looking out over an ocean. A quaint, meek, yet heart-throbbingly endearing smile.
I was tugged back to reality, a small pant to my breath. It was at that point that I remembered my name.
“Harkil.” I whispered, in the voice I now recognised as my own.
​
11. Betrayal
The knife carved through the flesh of his back, mangling it, feeding the blade with the drip-drop of crimson.
“W—what?” The man said, looking over his shoulder. “Adam, you…”
“It is what it is.” His assailant said, slinking back into the shade of the tree.
Upon the peak of the Greatmount, the two men had overlooked the kingdom they had just claimed. Upon the Greatmount, stood the Ripetree; so bright and colourful that it seemed to attack the pallid white of the clouds that swarmed the base of the mountain. It held a vast array of colours; fruits of red, green, blue, pink, purple, as small as a fingernail or as big as a clenched fist. It had swayed idly in the mountaintop wind – but the air had stilled, abruptly.
“We… built this together.” The man said. “Is this… this a joke?”
“You won’t be able to heal from that.” Adam said, not looking at the man; instead, eyeing the glistening fruits of the Ripetree with a lustful eye. “And Adam’s only one of my many names, and it will probably die this cycle.”
“What?”
“In this cycle, to our people, I’ll be known as the Alu-Naragami. The Honoured One.” Adam took a fruit from the tree. Enamoured by it, he held it up to his face height. His lips parted, his brow drifted apart, and his chin lifted. “But, I mean, call me Adam if you want.”
The man clasped at the knife in his back, feeling around numbly as the strength slowly left him.
“But… but why?” He turned, slowly, taking a step away from the precipice upon which he had been stabbed. “This… all this… it was built for us! Our unified vision!”
Adam plainly ignored him, inspecting the fruit in his hand with ever-increasing ecstasy.
“The Alu-Naragami shall have bested the Great Tyrant of the Land, in a valiant battle upon the Greatmount.” He took a knife from his satchel – all without looking away from the fruit – bringing it to his cheek, and gashing his own face. A red flood fell from the wound, but he didn’t even flinch. He was enticed by the fruit.
“W…What…” The man could barely utter, weakness filling his muscles with the weight of the sky.
“You know,” Adam began. “History is never fully accurate, even when not interrupted by editorial hands. Whether it be accounts lost to time, or personal bias invading the writing we have at our disposal, it’s never truly accurate. That only worsens as that history grows more distant.” He put the fruit in his satchel, looking back to the man mere paces from the edge of the cliff. “You said once that you wanted to be eternalized. Well, for people like you, who have yet to uncover the truth of how this world operates, that endeavour would be impossible.” He approached the man, who now reduced himself to his knees. Adam’s eyes shone with a seething indifference, a cruel terseness wriggling into his words and his face. He grabbed the man by his hair, forcing his head up to face him. “You’ll have been forgotten either way. That’s the unfortunate curse human beings bare, when they are unenlightened.”
“You… you’re saying that… you’re different?”
“Yes, I am.” Adam mocked, dragging his words. “I am the Immortal One. In a couple thousand years, once they’ve tired and forgotten the Alu-Naragami, I’ll reinvent the myth of an Immortal to hail. Because that’s who I am. That’s what I’ve always done.”
“You…” He slurred the remainder of his words.
“But, really, you were a good guy. That’s why I’m letting you know this now instead of shattering your fucking skull.” Adam stood once again, letting go of the man’s hair and letting him fall. “You could attribute this to malice if you felt like it, in these final moments of yours, but it’s not got anything to do with you. It’s just about me.” He kicked the man, sending him stumbling backwards, towards the precipice of the Greatmount. He was too weak to protest, too weak to struggle against it. A hoarse breath squeaked out of his throat, meek, small, deathly. Over, and over, and over, he got closer and closer, until half his body was hanging over the rocks overlooking his kingdom.
“One thing… Adam…”
His assailant kept silent.
“If what you’re saying is true…” He coughed. Adam edged him forwards. “How do… how do you bare eternity?” His voice cracked. The colour receded from his face.
“I found eternity’s secret, that’s how.” Adam smiled. “I found infinity. The way to live an unending life without falling into despair.” He kicked the deathly man off the mountain, and watched him drop. “By taking everything.”
​
12. Truth
I couldn’t touch it, no matter how hard I tried. No matter how many times I passed it, no matter how close I came, it repelled me all the same.
I had been here, in this place, all my life. A wide, open space – empty, aside from the deep, wave-like callouses in the white surface at my feet, those pathways that all lead me to The Thing, carved out of marble like the impression of wind on the sand of a beach, and The Thing itself. I had been running for as long as my memory stretched back, following those pathways, converging upon The Thing at the centre. The Thing – it was ever so small, ever so different from the world around it. All paths lead to The Thing. Yet, I couldn’t make it out. I would never get close enough to get a look beyond the thick fog that swarmed it.
I pressed forwards, as I always had, the feeling of those waves on the skin of my ankle numbing them slightly, distracting me, pulling me away—
No. I need to push forward. The Thing is so close.
I turn the bend in the floor-callous, getting closer to it. But as I zip forward, dashing unrelentingly, almost right into it, my mind fogs over. In that instant before impact, all thoughts are stolen from my mind. My limbs go limp, my eyes glaze over, a strange, comforting weakness fills me, and I am repelled from The Thing.
I was sent skidding into a pathway behind The Thing. I skimmed along the marble floor, chaotically, like a rag-doll – yet, strangely, coincidentally, as I move along the callous, I don’t even nick the sides; as if those pathways had been curated specifically for this moment. Or perhaps because I’d done this same thing hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of times.
I picked myself up, my awareness invading my mind once again as the fog of unconsciousness receded. As I did, I pushed my teeth harshly against one another.
I pushed forwards again. The ache in my chest grew louder, sheerer, overwhelming – increasing a hundred fold. An almost panicked fervour washed through my limbs; a desperate desire to see what was on the other side. Never before had something burned so scorching hot within me. I needed see to the The Thing in its full glory, or my life here would never be complete. I needed to know the truth, the truth of what I was ultimately doing in the first place.
I turn the corner of the callous once again, and the fog filling my skull grew thicker and thicker and thicker with each step. I clenched my fists, pushed on faster, knit my brow, strained my face – yet consciousness still evaporated from me mere paces away from The Thing.
I was sent skidding into a pathway behind The Thing. I skimmed along the marble floor, chaotically, like a rag-doll – yet, strangely, coincidentally, as I move along the callous, I don’t even nick the sides; as if those pathways had been curated specifically for this moment.
I stopped. Heaving for air whilst lying on my side, coughing, spluttering, I took a moment of pause, as I never had before. I let my teeth melt away from each other. I let my fingers part. I let my eyebrows unknit. And I rolled on to my back.
The sky above me was beautiful. Utterly beautiful. A wondrous, spectral interweaving of a billion colours. It was so vast and wide that I might have stared at it for a million years and not looked away. Perhaps I did. I let the bubbling ache in my legs dissolve, as I did with the bubbling ache in my chest. I sucked in a deep, stretching, long breath, and let it seep out of me even slower.
A small, content smile spread on my face – a smile; a strange, new sensation, one that my face had never experienced. As if mimicking the sky above me, my mind opened up, relaxing into a well of new emotion. Pangs of disappointment erupted when I remembered the fog that surrounded The Thing, but I didn’t feel the want to probe it any longer. This sky, so far above me, was so much more beautiful. So endless, so much to explore, it only grew in beauty. And so, lying there, The Thing became redundant.
The pathway-callouses bubbled, frothed, melted away around me, reducing the world to an endless flat of white. And with it, The Thing was buried.
I paid it no mind, returning my gaze to the unending beauty above me – calm and fulfilment filling the callous that panic had once ruled.
​
13. Freedom
I lay there, on the blow-up futon bed on the carpet in my living room. Twelve o’clock; midnight, on the first day of the new year. My hand falls loosely to my chest, my eyes locked on to the white ceiling. A puff of air escapes my lungs, the inside of my throat filling with a strange feeling. One of utter exhaustion – the kind of sweet release you’d get after finishing a run. It was smaller than I’d expected it to be, but it was there all the same, and heralded the recession of that deeper, darker, murkier feeling that had clung to my breath in every waking moment for the past who-knows-how-long.
I remained there, listening to the music playing in my ears, letting the feelings wash through me. I allowed it to be cultivated, cultivating it myself, listening closely for the sound of my shackles shattering. It was there, alright. Not as loud as I thought it would be, but it was there.
I lifted my hand from my chest, the phone screen blaring to life in my face. Monday 1 January. 00:01. Freedom day. The Face ID swivelled to life, and my phone opened by itself. Tension built in my veins, my throat closed up, I winced – before I stopped myself. I reminded myself that it was over. The feeling receded, filling with that renewal once again, but that fear was still there, carved into my heart.
I wonder when I’ll truly escape the feeling of her presence, breathing down my nape. The 03:00 messages. The low rumble of a call. The purple-pink of her profile picture. The million-billion apologies. The storm of questions, whether I truly loved her, what I’d do if we met in real life, how much she wanted to end—
I breathed, heavily, looking at my empty inbox. The phone screen beat incessantly against my eyes. I was free. But the feeling was still there.
Life went on. I lived, free of her now, slowly making progress in other aspects of my life. Studying, writing, having fun with friends, family, enjoying new things. I had other focuses. More space to be myself. No more need to lie.
It wasn’t dandelions and rainbows as I’d hoped. I still struggled, as any teenager would in any situation. But the new year brought new troubles. New people. A different smell in the air. There was one time that I went out into the shopping centre with a bunch of my friends. We had fun, played a couple board games, laughed heartily. I don’t think there was a single instant where I felt bereaved, unhappy, guilty or responsible for any amorphous person’s life across a phone screen. I had time, almost too little of it, to enjoy what was before me.
And so, it was at that moment that it came over me. That feeling, that catharsis, flooded me fully. I broke down, the fog of tears erupting in my eyes. Truly, it was out of nowhere. It didn’t feel as natural, as logical, or abrupt as I thought it would be. But it happened. It felt as if a tidal wave was thrashing within my chest, and the only way it could escape was by racing out of my throat. And so it did. One moment I was laughing, the next, I had shattered, bringing my head to the table.
It was over. I was free, all so suddenly, all so randomly, I had reclaimed my life.
It was so feverishly overwhelming, so incredibly filling, it made every moment of suffering almost worth it. Every lie, every affirmation, every I love you, every hour dedicated to someone else, every second of my life spent tearing off chunks of my own flesh to feed her, all of it; it all came pouring out in a sheer, unadulterated wail, filling me with the most gorgeous, warm feeling I had ever experienced.
Freedom doesn’t come over you in a snap, when choosing yourself. But you have to make that choice. For the sake of the people that value you, the people that will want to laugh with you, you have to accept taking that strange, constricting feeling on the chin. That’s what I learned in that moment, and I don’t want anyone else to ever deny themselves the possibility for a life where they can make their own choices. Where they can laugh with friends, sit around a table, play a board game, poke at someone for being everyone’s target. Because I learnt, not in the moment where I made the decision to cut her out of my life, but months later after I’d forgotten her, the fact that closure’s shy.
Freedom is shy.
​
14. Chaos
Equilibrium is the process that a reversible reaction falls in to when both the forward and backward reaction are of the same proportion to one another. If an outside force attempts to break that equilibrium, the system itself will work to oppose that chaos; always, without fail, giving in to entropy and returning to equilibrium.
Entropy. The natural opposition to unity. The great divider of the universe, the separator, the great antagonist to peace.
I could feel the universe all around me. I was at the Heart of the Universe, the cosmos’s very centre. Every slam of the stick against the proverbial drum was completely and entirely separate from the strike before it and the strike after; the void between the sounds of the heartbeat endlessly excruciating to my ears. Around me, was a formless mass, red, orange, a deep throbbing pink, all swirling into and out of one another in a perfectly symmetrical line of motion.
It was utterly disgusting. But I was drawing nearer to the centre now.
I swam through the mass, the liquid enclosing me, pushing in on me, crushing me, but I continued, pushing further and further inwards. This was urgent. Entropy was to destroy everything. Everything would be separated from one another, destroyed – reduced to atoms. I would not let it.
I opened my mouth to scream, but the liquid flooded my throat. I must keep moving forward. I must free the universe from order. And then, there it was. The Heart. The source of everything. It struck me with an overwhelming feeling. It was as if the entire, vast detail of every last inch of the universe had all been crammed into a single point, so that I could see every last angstrom of that small piece of the world at the very centre of the pink mass.
It was cathartic. I felt the tightness in my chest release, fall apart.
I grabbed it, stretching my fingers around it and crushing it. I closed my eyes, imagining the fire of chaos blazing through my veins. I felt my organic flesh lash out against the ordered, inorganic world around me, protesting the force that would strip me of my existence.
And so, flame flickered to life.
The world evaporated in a singular, horrific instant – the universe imploding in on itself. And like droplets, leaving the surface of a body of water, it came crashing back outwards, fluctuating inwards and outwards with the uncontrollable malice of a rabid animal. The force of nature, granted liberation from the shackles of entropy, was so great and hoarse that, whipped up in that storm of fiery, omnipresent chaos, I could not handle it. I felt insanity slowly close in on me, like a shadow growing on all sides of my peripheries. It grew, and grew, and grew bigger, harsher, until my mind was consumed by the chaos all around me.
My body was ripped apart.
All semblance of coherent thought was dragged out of me.
Whatever was left of me was sent cascading into the endless expanse of the newborn universe, directionless, purposeless.
One with the mighty Chaos.
I had finally become One.
Finally, I was a part of something greater than myself.
​
15. Faith
The man tilled God’s earth, rapping his hoe against the soil again and again and again. The mists of His presence simmered in the air all around, crackling, boiling, billowing. It traced in-between his joints, reaching into his body, softening the bounce-back of the blows he levelled at the earth, over, and over, and over.
The night’s sky expanded brilliantly above His earth and His horizon, splattered with the milky spread of stars and nebulae. It overlooked an equally sprawling expanse of flat earth, suspended and spinning – disk-like – directionlessly, at the centre of the universe. It was a great expanse of mountains, valleys and plains, all of the same kind of green, the same kind of vision, the same kind of flesh.
The nature of this existence did not matter to the man, nor was the description he attributed to it entirely accurate. However, pensive and sober in mood, he merely hacked away at the earth, tilling it, giving in to the warmth of servitude to the God hanging around him in the air, the soil, the stone. Over and over and over again, displacing the soil, to make way for the beauty God would surely conjure in its place.
This was his stewardship; his role in cultivating and protecting the world from the evils of insubordination, chaos and disorder. He was to till God’s earth, to rap his hoe against the dirt, and let God do the rest. Nothing more, nothing less – that was all he needed.
However, in the moments that he blinked, just before his eyelids would settle upon one another, echoes of another reality replaced the grass beneath him.
The man shook his head, vigorously, frantically, dropping his hoe to the ground. He brought his hands together, knitting them together into a mighty fist, falling to his knees, beginning a deep and hearty prayer. He whispered to the Lord all around for forgiveness, for hesitating, for not living up to his best, and in that moment the mist lifted him up, reassuring him, absolving him.
He began once again, tilling the dirt, in a harsher movement now. More terse, quicker. A sweat dragged against his nape, filled his eyebrows, and the repetitive slamming of his heart grew louder with it.
He wondered how much longer it would be before he could put the hoe down, be fully embraced by the fog in the Great After. How much longer did his duty stand for? He beat against the dirt, even harsher now, ridding himself of that heretical thought.
He blinked again, and the visage of that darker, murkier reality returned for a micro-instant.
He fell to his knees, bellowing a sharp and hoarse wail into the night. He trembled, fear overwhelming his senses. His hands slammed together once again, his grip tightening harder than ever – to pray, or was it to remain anchored to this reality?
He groaned another terrified protest, slamming that fist against his head, again and again and again.
And when he opened his eyes, he was there no longer.
The warmth of His presence had dissipated. The promise of the Great After vanished. And here he was, surrounded by the pure and utter darkness of his bedchambers, his wife cowering in the corner.
​
He looked over at her, his maddened, wild, angry confusion filling him slowly, surely, like water from a tap slowly filling a glass. No. He still had God’s will to carry out – his vision for the most beautiful, true world – the world he must lay out for Him, at all expense.
He began his march towards the woman.
​
16. Guilt
They stared me right in my face, they did. Right in my soul. Those faceless fiends, those inhuman horrors whose existence is granted only one purpose; to direct me to the City. Their eye-sockets were mangled, their skulls were unnaturally slim – as if they were empty – and their skin was as dirty and grey as gravel. There was a horde of them, each wrapped in a grimy rag of that same pallid grey colour, that same colour that filled the sky and smothered the towering City behind them. The City; a collection of thin and solitary spires, amalgamating to form the impression of an actual society on the horizon. Wisps of black fog hung around the spires, enshrouding them, embracing them.
My people knew it as Judgement. These people knew it as the Harbrakk-sho-Narricc. I liked to call it the City, although it couldn’t really be described as such.
I could feel the horde slowly closing in – at a speed slow enough to fall within the confines of being gradual, but fast enough to overwhelm me and steal away my comfort in my control of the situation.
“Fine. Fine. I’ll go.” I said. I began to walk towards the City, pushing past the strange figures with my tongue clutched between my teeth. In my stride, I was forced to brush past one of the beings. When I did, my skull was viciously split open, and my brain was force-fed the full nauseating brunt of my past. The memories were quick and furious; slamming into me like a flurry of blows, delivered by a rabid, saliva-slathering animal. I came to, not a moment later, panting and clutching at my forehead. Sweat knitted the space between it and my palm.
I could feel them closing in again. Faster.
I pushed forward, focusing on the City on the skyline. I kept on moving, not daring look around, not daring look back. I focused on the greyed plain stretching outwards before me, tracing my eyes over its drought-cracks. And after an eternity, I had finally left them behind – far back enough that I felt secure enough to send them one glance back.
I regretted it.
The horizon convulsed and warped with the flesh of their conjoined and mangled body; a heaving, sludge-like mass of ever-changing, ever-morphing flesh and blood and skin and bones. From that mass, a rigorous wail escaped its gut and squirmed grotesquely in my ear, filling me with a fear that I still feel now. A fear that I will still feel, a thousand years from now. Those faceless, graceless nuns of punishment – yes, for that’s what they were, I learned that then – it was their glee to put in me their curse.
I staggered forward, debilitated and shook, however strangely, to my core. Despite the great mass of bone’s insistence on swaying and wailing on the far horizon, I would forever feel its presence closing in, like the gradual tightening of a fist around my neck.
It was at that point, frazzled as I was, that I reached the City. It was like a great court of metal spires, arranged in a circle, leaving a small expanse of grey earth in its middle.
I approached it.
“Guilty.” Something said, speaking to my left, my right, from before me and after me – or perhaps from inside my head. It was a scratchy voice, low and moany, and it did little more than tighten the knot of fear constricting around my lungs. “Come forth.” And, whilst I had been moving forward of my own accord even before its orders, my legs began to work without need for my input. A spell, set to bind me. If that’s the case, does Judgement not know of my condition? Is this a formula, a general sentence, delivered by a god unaware of my existence?
I approached the centre of the court of spires, my legs moving at a rate faster than what I would have liked – at a speed slow enough to fall within the confines of being gradual, but fast enough to overwhelm me and steal away my comfort in my control of the situation.
Hurra-upon-high, I despised that feeling.
I had reached the absolute centre now, enclosed by the great metallic spires. I took in a long, winding breath—
A spire impaled me from below. It shattered through my body, ripping it apart swiftly and with little sound to mourn it. I split, almost in half, a couple tendons here and there keeping me in one piece as I rose with the rising spire. Pain slammed into me, from all sides, all directions, outside-in, inside-out. Everything, and I mean everything, poured out of me; a horrible, overwhelming, storm-like feeling – the feeling of death.
But even as I was about to die, something stopped me. Or rather, time stopped. The pace at which the clouds sped away from the far horizon grinded to a halt. And the pain bellowing, screeching, moaning within me – only grew closer and closer towards a crescendo.
I could do nothing. I could say nothing. I could not twitch a muscle.
And for the next thousand years, and the following thousand years after, I did not get any closer to liberation. Only pain, having increased tenfold, awaits me in the next moment. And the same applies for the one following, and the one after that. But that’s all fine. Whilst it’s impossible to get used to it, I can understand that pain. But the pain of lacking control – being forced into an eternity where nothing can change – that was the true hell I had been forced in to.
I do feel guilty for what I’ve done. I have more regrets than seconds I’ve been impaled here. Yet, is there nothing I can do to absolve myself? Is that really out of the cards? Is there really nothing I could do to out-weight my crimes? Or am I merely doomed to stay here, until time ends, in pain?
The screams of that fleshy mass of bones, skin and blood waxed and waned on the horison, growing ever louder, ever more incessant – never ceasing, never forgiving, no matter how much I may plead.
​
17. Redemption
Pain rips in to my legs as I struggle up the stairs – the stairs of marble, the stairs to the clouds, the stairs enveloped by the hazy, indiscernible fog of the sky. Yes, I had been struggling for a long time. A long while. Just focusing on the step before me, and the step after that. Pushing through the obscuring fog, with no idea how close or how far I was from my destination. How far was it? Did it even truly end anywhere?
I strained my lungs for air, scraping the oxygen out of the foggy gas all around me like I was carving the last morsels of food out of the bottom of a bowl. I could not see anything before me, and I doubt I would see anything if I looked back. Yet, I pushed onwards.
The mist all around me, despite acting as a veil to whatever lay at the top of the staircase, was as brilliantly white as the sun itself. It was beautiful, in its own way. In the same way the ocean was beautiful, or the sky was beautiful, or the earth was beautiful – it was overwhelmingly powerful and broad, and as much as I may spite it for obscuring my way, I could only be in awe of it.
Suddenly, I felt my foot slip. It failed to rise enough to meet the top of the next stair. I tumbled over my body-weight, losing my standing, and was sent cascading down the staircase. Tumbling, rumbling, smashing, the fog around me closed in on me, thundering like storm-clouds, darkening like them too. Lightning simmered within the omnipresent mass, filling with the impression of memories. My memories. Horrific memories.
The feeling of a crude smile spreading on my lips.
A sweet apple, voracious and juicy.
A pointing finger.
The small grimace of another.
A knife, a dagger, clutched in my hands.
An open ocean, an open beach.
The feeling of a slap on my cheek.
The smell of hazels.
My head slammed against the coarse and sharp marble of a stair, knocking the memory out of me momentarily, a gush of static and electrified mist swelling in its place; concussion. But after that brief moment of sharp and dulling pain, it continued to slam into me without regard.
The smell of blood.
The fog of tears in my eyes.
The rope.
A darkened room, lit only by moonlight.
Ink on a canvas.
Days spent in bed.
Light passing through a concave glass.
An unfinished sentence, scrawled onto parchment.
I grabbed onto the side of a stair, gritting my teeth so hard that I thought they would shatter. With friction whipping up tornadoes of fire on the ends of my fingertips, I managed to grind myself to a halt. I lay there, clutching on for dear life, letting the swell of my heart die down and return to normal, letting the swarm of memories dissipate. Grimacing, I got up. But despite it all, I pushed on, renewal pumping from my arteries.
It went on for an eternity after that. The degeneration of the muscles in my leg furthered and furthered, growing, swelling, almost to the point they were numb – but I still continued. My eyes were trained on the mist dead ahead, my eyes un-shifting from a singular point of focus on the obscured horison.
I had been here, stumbling up these stairs, for what felt like long enough for the hourglass of time to run out, and I still had made no progress. Step after step, milestone after invisible milestone, I pushed forward. To what, I don’t know. Perhaps I knew when I started. Perhaps this fog all around me had entered my brain. But I know that it means freedom, in some regard. I can feel it, like a thrum in my bones. Beyond this fog, at the peak of these stairs, lies solace.
I wonder, after everything I’ve done, all these stairs I’ve climbed, these heights that I’ve attained – will I truly be worthy of such a heaven?
And with that thought, almost in response to it; the fog parted.
Light flooded the world around me – a pocket of air emerging from amongst the clouds. The gold of the sun glimmered and licked at the fog, filling it with the sweetness and softness of honey. The full beauty of the fog was brought into full display. Oh, what a great blessing it was. It was like witnessing the entire ocean, the entire sky, the entire earth. And before me, the end of the stairs were greeted by great, white, pearly set of gates. They stood as tall as the stairway itself, and shone, like a beacon, as bright as the stars highlighted by the night’s sky. The fog of the clouds billowed around it, swarming it, knitting in and out of of the spaces between the marble pillars to form a great, spectral display that I found difficult to fully take in.
I stopped in place, letting the stabbing feeling behind my eyes, the tears I had been suppressing all this time – slowly trickle out of me. I dropped to my knees, bowing to the great gates, muttering clutched and hoarse prayers beneath my breath.
Was it coincidence that the fogs parted, the moment that exact thought crossed my mind?
The gates slowly swayed open, even the sound of the hinges creaking imitating the art of a master violinist; almost in response to my thoughts.
Slowly, gradually, but ever so surely, I lifted from the stone of the floor. I tip-toed up towards the opened gate, step by step. Quickly, I tempted at a walk. And then a brisk one. Before I broke out into a run, spreading my arms wide and letting the tears fall freely – embracing my destination, after a thousand years of struggle, and a thousand years more.
“Thank you.” I sobbed, enveloped by the great light. “Thank you.”
​
18. Survival
What does it mean to survive? What does it mean to want to survive? Is it just a carnal urge – a desire of the flesh? Or is there anything beyond that, something more existential, to make survival worth it? Fear, hate, shame – they are emotions that crawl and wriggle and seethe; and they all come from the need to survive. Is there any point to it?
Ironic, really, having these thoughts at a time like this.
Plunging my oar into the silky waters, I scraped against the seabed, feverishly, pushing my boat away from the shore. A heaviness clung to my muscles, a damp haze clung to my eyes, which didn’t help in my escape. Maybe I should lay off the booze when I’m around these parts, with these Beasts on every mat and corner.
With the ticklish feeling of the Beasts’s presence mere inches away from the small of my neck, I paddled away profusely, hurriedly, parting the ocean waters like a knife through linen. It was an eerily beautiful sight – with the reddened Sun dawning on the skyline, and the pinkish clouds to match it – it only highlighted the strangeness of the cerulean blue of the waters around me. In all my travels, I had never before seen a liquid like this; so luminescent it might have been the chosen bay of the Sun Itself.
But that didn’t matter. The Beasts were still there.
Ragged, howling, only slightly muffled by the water in their scampering attempts at swimming, the Beasts flapped towards me all the same. Their black paws, riddled with spines of talons and dripping with the nauseating crimson-black of blood, did little to aid them, but their sheer and putrid strength made up for it.
I pant, pushing each stroke harder, faster, turning back to face the Sun on the horison. It’s light was sheer and blinding, despite how far it had descended beneath the mountains at the outer-most reaches of my vision, but the small whispers of warmth it had enveloped me – keeping me alive – curling around my frost-licked, goosebumped arms. I paused my panting for a moment, keeping the breath at the top of my lungs, before releasing it, along with a renewed burst of energy.
But still, the Beasts are keeping up. Right on my tail – even though they’re the ones that actually have one.
God, I can’t keep this up.
I have completely separated from the bay now. I’m out in open water. But the feeling of their presence is squarely highlighted in my consciousness. I can feel them barely missing the back end of my pitiful raft, threatening to crush it to splinters between their yellowed, mangy teeth. It feels like the tickle of a feather traced up and down my spine – but horrifically amplified. So terribly so that I can’t bare it. I don’t want to bear it. I can almost feel the desire for it all to end creep into that sea of survival instinct.
Survive. I must survive.
A roaring flame erupts in my gut, torching my insides, bellowing and writhing, protesting the world all around me. The Beasts, the sea, the Sun. I’m beginning to despise it all. The regularity of it, the threats on every mat and corner, the harshness of the feelings of fear, hate, and shame. I’m done with it. Its taste had clung to the back of my throat every day since I was born – and I refuse to tolerate it any longer.
I want to live life free of it. I don’t want to run anymore.
I stop my paddling, and my boat slowly creeps to a halt.
I don’t want to survive. I want to live.
I raise my paddle, a great sneer crawling up my face. The Beasts finally catch up, and tear into my boat with viciousness. I can feel my heart faltering – but no. I strengthen myself. I set my jaw. They’re all around me. Swarming the small, pitiful dingy. I grit those teeth harder.
I let out a bellowing roar, the declaration of my existence, and slam my oar right into a Beast’s skull.
​
19. Courage
The precipice was jagged. The precipice was coarse. It overlooked a sheer, gut-swaying drop, one that led the eyes straight down through a plane of clouds and straight to the very corner nook of a valley. The stream of wind at his back did little to quell his nerves, pushing him closer and closer to the edge. That same wind, strangled by the spindly, sprawling tree behind him, rattled ferociously across the plateau. The sound of it whipped in-between the branches, forcing the tree into a lean, and reshaping the wind’s voice into that of a scream-like wail. It swayed, almost lethargically, almost miserably, almost despairingly.
The man repeatedly bit at the inside of his top lip, over, and over, in regular motion. He continued to peer off the side of the mountain, continued to get closer and closer to the drop – but hesitation clung to his muscles like a lost child. He kicked at the earth, frustration growing in hesitancy’s place. And as he did, a small piece of rock at the very, very edge of the precipice came loose, scuttling down the mountainside and towards the canyon.
His heart thumped, loud, in his chest. He retreated slightly, a shiver taking hold of his legs. He strained his mouth, increasing the frequency at which he bit at his lip. Nausea expanded and pulsated within his gut, clawing up his throat, threatening to infect his brain or escape out through his throat.
He took another step forwards.
He stood there, mere inches away from the fall, looking down. Fighting down the nausea, he let his thoughts roam freely. To his family, his friends, the handwritten notes he left them. The clouds below him billowed around the great bow of the mountain, parting around it. They were grey and solemn, and somehow that leaked into the world above them. All around the man was just the pallid grey of forthcoming rain.
Suddenly, a crack formed in the rock beneath his feet. Larger this time. His brow shot up his face, and he stumbled back – just as a large chunk of rock separated from the mass and cascaded down the side of the mountain, alongside its predecessor.
He sat there, panting, fear cloaking his heart like an infection of nightshade. Waiting for the crackle of rock against rock to stop, he sat there, sucking his top lip into his mouth before letting it escape once more, over, and over, and over again.
But the rattle did not stop.
He flung himself further away from the precipice, scrambling on his hands and knees, as more and more of the jut of rock that extended over the mountain from out of the plateau crumbled away. The deep, skull-shattering rumble only grew by the moment, sending a shudder to his very bones.
He stood up, and watched the ensuing landslide.
It was like some great catastrophe delivered by an Old Testament God; so great and calamitous that even the dust emerging from the crashing and crushing of rock was as thick as the clouds of heaven itself. It shook the plateau, like it was in an angry man’s grasp, loose rocks quivering and shivering upon its surface.
And the man stood there, jaw agape, heart thumping, mind reeling. As he watched the rocks fall into the canyon below, he felt truly and utterly sick – for too many moments the rocks hung in free-fall, so horribly and nauseatingly so that he could barely even hold a look at it for longer than a second.
It was at that moment that something slapped the side of his face. He turned, and was faced with an utterly perplexing sight. There, on the withered and waned skeleton of a tree, the one that the wind was harshly assaulting, grew a small fruit. It seemed impossible. But there it was; glimmering, red, luscious – it almost lit up the pallid grey world all around.
The man picked it, and placed it carefully in his pocket.
Briefly, he looked back at the precipice. A swathe of overwhelming emotions clouded his vision, bringing with it a fog of tears. But he grappled with himself, struggling against the feeling, and eventually, gradually, slowly but surely, fighting it down with every last inch of power left in him. Before he began his walk back across the plateau. Back home.
​
20. Isolation
The world around me was like a warm bath. Not too hot – but not at all cold either. Just natural, present, soothing. Unchanging. Suspended in the vacuum of space, I let the muscles in my fingers loosen, release – and the tension came rolling out of me like the unfurling of a dove’s wings. How long I’d been here, I don’t know. I didn’t feel like counting.
I had been sent on a solo mission to another galaxy. Solo – as I’d requested. And Lord, this place was so much better than the Milky Way. My eyes trace over the liquid splatter of stars on the skyline; a great splash of cerulean that spreads from one end of the horison to the other. It bathed the world in a curious light; one sheer, overwhelming, as infinite as the expanse of space before me, yet all so subtle and kind.
The black hole drags me closer and closer towards it surface, subtly and kindly tickling at my feet.
All of it is so, so beautiful. I don’t need anything else.
But I remember my mother’s reprimands in a sharp, painful moment.
“You need to get outside more!” She would cry. “Get some sunlight on your skin! You’ll shrivel up. Go talk to someone! Go play with your friends!” She didn’t understand how that made me feel. Like I wasn’t doing enough with my life, that the way in which I enjoyed my own existence was wrong. That my very existence was wrong. “You’ll be miserable for the rest of your life if you just sit on your ass and do nothing, Harriett!” Why do I need to exist in any other way? If I want to exist like this, alone, in this endless comfort, why shouldn’t I? I was born into this world, so I have the right to make that decision.
Yet, whenever I heard those words – it was like the sun was clouding over. Like a sunspot had emerged, and it had grown to cover the entirety of the sun’s surface. I could almost describe the sensation that overwhelmed me as… brown. Constrictive. Suffocating. Horrid and rancid. Controlling. I hated it. I hated it, because I suppose I wanted to live my best possible life, and thought I was making a mistake. But going outside never seemed to break through to me. It was still boring. Useless. I could’ve spent that time inside, reading a textbook, or writing a paper.
I spread my arms a little wider, pushing against the resistance of my suit. I push back, until the tendons either side of my chest stretch and ache slightly. I smack my lips and allow my jaw to spread open, wide, openly accepting the grin that tore at the inside of my face. The ticklish sensation of the black hole’s pull creeped up my ankles, knees, and thighs, enveloping them like a million tiny slugs. Yet, that sensation was so great – so liberating. So warm.
“I love you.” A memory resurfaced. “No matter what you do, I love you. I’m sorry if I shout. Maybe it’s because we’re a lot different from each other.” My mother was sobbing to me. On her knees, her hands rested on the sides of my arms, her long auburn bangs hiding her face. “You’re so much more brilliant than I am. In so many ways. I’m sorry if I made you feel like that’s wrong.”
I swallow, pushing a sharp spike of emotion back down my throat.
The black hole’s strength picks up, attempting to tear my body apart – legs from torso. Torn, as are my thoughts. Because I do love her. I have loved her. Despite my desire to be free of it all, I still love everything that I’ve been given. But there’s a little something more to this endless void, this endless nothing, this endless absence, that lights a match of something new within my soul. Something to quell the brown, constrictive, suffocating feeling; a great, wide, cerulean feeling – as cool as an ocean, yet warm and cosy at the same time.
The black hole was staggeringly close now, so much so that it took up the majority of my vision.
“I… just want to see you more.” My mother said, in that resurfacing memory. “I want to make sure you’re living your best life. The happy life that I’ve lived.”
The universe seems to speed up.
“Because I love you.”
Stars die, birthing nebulae.
“I want nothing but the best for you in this life.”
The nebulous clouds swarm together, spawning tiny pin-pricks of light. New stars.
“But if that looks different to you, go for it.”
They too grew, lived, died, in just a flickering instant, before exploding in turn.
“Shoot for the stars, my Einstein.”
Slowly at first, but faster and faster and faster, the cerulean sky dissipated – exploding, imploding, vanishing.
“Because I’m sure you’ll do great.”
And I wonder, as my feet touch the event horizon – was this the right choice? Brown or cerulean? In that final moment before I reached the destination I had sought all these years, the moment before being funneled into the solitary unknown, I honestly didn’t know the answer.
“I love you.” My mother said, before the memory was swallowed up, by the deepest darkness in all the universe.
​
21. Sacrifice
The vision of a thousand dead invaded the backs of my eyes. A scattered battleground of bodies, upon an ashen and grey expanse, unilluminated by the moon. I couldn’t let it happen. I could feel the weight of all their lives upon my shoulders – the weight of the very sky itself.
I opened my eyes, and looked out upon the reddened expanse before me. On the horison, a small spread of trees populated the foot of a mountain; a plateau that rose, elevated from the section of the country I stood upon. It was the early hours of the morning, so it would be a couple hours before the Resistance arrived.
Thousands would die. I probably wouldn’t.
I raised my hand, trembling, stabilising it by kneading it into my chest. I clutched the fabric of my Cloth in that hand, bringing it to my lips. I let it smother them for a couple moments, before shakily kissing it back.
I love humanity. I love my people. I felt that more than I felt a desire to keep on living. It was a such a strong emotion, one so horribly vast and spectacular that my heart simply couldn’t contain it. As General, I had a responsibility to the Resistance. But more and more, as our cause was slowly whittled down, I realised that this was hopeless. It was all hopeless. And what mattered more than a squabble over land was the sanctity of human life.
“What’re you doing here so early? Unarmed, at that.” A voice said, to my far left. I turned, a sudden burst of energy erupting in my heartbeat, pushing along blood at the speed of cavalry. There, standing amidst the clearing, was a solitary man. Short, yet not stout – rather thin, with an even thinner yet fuller jaw to accompany his wild and frizzy amalgamation of hair and the sharp look in his eyes. He wore a small, easy smile, and spread his arms open as if to greet me.
“Who’re you?” I asked. “You speak our dialect. You’re not one of them, I take it?”
“Oh, no. No, no, no! I couldn’t possibly be.” His voice was silky smooth – soothing, even. “I was here to observe the conclusion to this latest move enacted on this grandiose chess board.”
“Are you now?” I let the tension in my muscles release, looking away, towards the dark skyline. “I’ve come here to end it.”
“Oh?” He took a couple steps closer.
“I’m ending the conflict.”
“And you’ll settle? Is that who you are, General?”
“Yes.” I shot a glare back at him, my voice unravelling into an unkempt fury. “I refuse to watch my people die! It is an utterly disgusting thing.” A wave of emotion unravels with it. I bring my hands, still trembling, towards my face, covering my eyes with them. I must look pitiful. “The greatest of sinners are those who send others to die for a cause that they don’t get to decide.”
“But they agree with you, don’t they? They’re fellow recusants combating oppression.”
“They’re children. They don’t know what all this means.” I release my head from my hands, and merely stare down at them. “I’m grown. I’ve seen war. I have scars.” My voice is low, deep, trembling. “I don’t wish that upon anyone else. Not even those who wish to usurp us of our land.”
The man let the silence crystallise between us. He looked off into the distance, his hair waving idly in the early morning wind.
“So what is it that you would do?” He asked.
“Something I should’ve done when all this started.” A thousand of our dead flooded the back of my eyes. They were all looking at me, all perched on my shoulder, breathing down my neck. I could take it no longer. “Pass this message on to my people, and theirs. Tell them that I am rewriting the map. The border being marked being where we stand.”
“And how are you going to enforce that?”
I gave him no response.
Righting myself, puffing out my chest, I held my breath. I closed my eyes, and let my hands fall to my sides. And then The Feeling filled me. A vibrant, fire-like feeling, one that scorched my insides. I furrowed my brow, focusing in on it – intensifying it. It burned hotter in a sudden roar, and slammed against the inside of my rib-cage once more.
“Oh, so that’s your plan?” The man chuckled. I could hear him pacing away from me. “You’ll be remembered harshly for this.”
“I don’t care.” I said. “I refuse to let any more children die.” I focused harder, intensifying the Flame again. It erupted into a cataclysmic surge of power and energy, pouring out of every pore in my body. I could feel myself being dragged away by it, like my consciousness was seeping away… but no. I steadied my focus, reimbursing the Power for the fourth time. The Flame grew horrendously hot, maddeningly furious in its rage in my gut. But I pushed through it, intensifying it once more.
And then it all was washed away, in a great, deep indomitable blue. And in the place of the field I had stood upon, a scar emerged upon the earth – grey, like a tear in the earth’s flesh.
A tear flutters out of my eye in the blast, before my consciousness recedes, dissipates—
​
22. Power
The old man made his way down the winding, garden path – the path adorned with greens and oranges and small blues. Flowers, trees, bushes; they all seemed to dance to the same chorus of wind as it filtered through the grove. It seemed to frolic, almost saunter amidst the greenery, finding its way between petals and grass-tips, brushing up against the old man’s ankles.
It was a truly fine day, one that allowed the pure blue of the sky to be fully relieved of clouds. The enclosure, where the old man walked, sat at the very far end of the great castle that sat elevated from the rest of the city. The city, that expanded completely to every nook and cranny of the Island, like a densely populated ship amidst the sea that surrounded it. To either side, the Mainland sat; the coastline, wide, glorious, extending all the way to the horizon.
But the old man’s gaze wasn’t on his people.
Rather, it was seduced by a great fruit that was perched upon a small tree that sat next to the pathway. It was a ripe, deep red, ferociously juicy – even at a mere glance – and simple perfect for the taking. A low chuckle turned in the old man’s throat, a deep, guttural one; one that parted the man’s lips and pushed them apart into a slithering, curdling grin. He reached for it, placing his fingers on the very bottom of the fruit before parting them – crawling up the body of the fruit like five snakes – eventually fitting so perfectly in his hand that when he reached the top of the fruit where it met the tree, it fell perfectly into his hand. He pulled it loose with a sudden snap. The branch broke off with it, causing the man to frown. He grabbed the branch, and viciously tore it from it from the fruit as if he were tearing a man’s arm off.
“Your Honour,” a young voice called, from the other side of the enclosure. “I hope your health serves you well.”
The old man turned, slowly, eyeing the boy that had entered his silence. “What is it?”
“A small group of protesters have began demonstrations at the foot of your castle, Honour.”
“Well? Be rid of them.” A small prick of irritation rose onto the man’s forehead.
“But sir,” the boy stammered. “The bill you passed last month means we have no federal power over them. They’re exercising their speech, and thus—”
“Oh, darn it all to hell.” Rage grew to a boil in his chest. He began back down the pathway – the way he had come – towards the exit leaving the enclosure – a storm in his bones. Inadvertently he had crushed the fruit in his hand; reducing it from a marvel to a putrid mass of red and orange.
He pushed through the castle, ignoring his hand-servants and hand-maids and their worried questions, a fog thoroughly clouding his mind. And that was only intensified by the roars and moans of the shifting crowd outside his door. He gritted his teeth, struggling up the stairs on to the colonnade overlooking the ensemble.
Holding signs aloft, shouting chants of revolution and fire, a demonstration at least one hundred and fifty strong swarmed the gates to his castle. A few moments after he approached the banisters of the colonnade, a head looked from below to see him. And then a second head turned. And then five. And then fingers pointed. Cries went up. Twenty heads. Fifty heads. Seventy heads. The churning of the crowd erupted into a cacophony of wails and screams. Signs were raggedly, almost hoarsely whipped through the air, a million meaningless slogans scrawled upon them in bold, black paint.
All their eyes were upon him. Veined. Red. Asking. Needing.
“People, people!” The man said, forcing the fury down his throat, baying it not to enter his voice. He needed control back. He couldn’t allow the storm within him to brew any louder. “Allow me to address you.” Slowly, but surely, the crowd died down with their chanting. “I am aware of your strife, believe me, I am hurting too.” He pushed a slippery, slimy kind of weakness into his voice. “It is an issue that will be solved as soon as I have a pen and parchment.” He lowered his head, so that it seemed to hang meekly before him. “But for now, we must focus on the real enemy!” But he rose into a bellow in a snap. “The Mainland is falling victim to a purge! A seething, horrific purge that is robbing the lives from our brethren! Our kin! We must not fall victim to petty gripes. We must focus on the invasion, as I am in every waking moment!” His tone was strong, almost bull-like – and his words were rich and full of bile. “I have not spared a second since this vicious onslaught has begun. I have done all that is in my power to aid those in harm’s way. Those poor souls sodomised by those across the Sea. So, please, I ask of you just one thing,” he reduced his voice, almost to a whisper – but intentionally loud enough that it would just about reach their ears. “Fight with me, not against me.” He implored.
And with that, he left, walking back into the castle. A small bubble of excitement wriggled around in his chest – a stable joy, one that was not threatened, one that was not vicarious or troubled.
But the roaring erupted again. The torrential sound beat at the walls of the castle, so much so that it could’ve collapsed. The man set his jaw, hard, shrinking back into himself.
This wasn’t what he campaigned for. He campaigned for the chariots. The parades. The fruit. He didn’t care about their protest. He didn’t even read their signs. He didn’t care about the invasion.
The storm of chaos slammed into the bubble of excitement, eradicating all control the man had over his trembling bones. He slinked to the ground – the ground padded by a beautiful spread of crimson carpet – shuddering, shaking, a tear leaking out of one eye.
“Damn it all to hell…”
​
23. Desire
The flames rolled, seethed, raged, tossing and turning and writhing as they spread from grass-tip to grass-tip. It desecrated the surroundings, leaping and surging from bush to bush, branch to branch, swiftly tearing across the land – almost as fast as the wind that stoked it. Almost alive. Almost enthralled.
The village sitting across the plains cowered as the wave of fire whipped towards it. The men – all dressed in white, holy robes – chanted the words of their God in harmonic unison. They clutched either fist in the other, many struggling to maintain the steadiness of the low hum of their voice, many struggling to maintain the composure in their countenance.
Behind them, in the safety of the shadow of a small hut, a small boy shivered and wailed. He clutched at his own knees, his brow as wrinkled as the inflamed grass, his teary face the wettest thing in miles. All around him was a hot, steaming world of madness. The heat clung to him, to his sweaty skin, to the inside of his skull; lathering his brain in a thick, murky substance that stopped up the passage of thoughts through his brain. The only thing that made it through was the incessant, hurried need to escape from the feeling pressing in from all around.
The boy wondered why such a thing as this existed – in as much capacity as the heat allowed him to think – if it were to cause so much death and destruction. Why, oh why, would God create the world in such a way that would lead to such a catastrophe? It was cruel. Sadistic.
All around the boy, despite the panic that was surely erupting in everyone around that time, people came together. They came together close, embracing loved ones, gifting their spouses one last kiss, whispering sweet nothings in their children’s ears. The ironclad community of the village held strong; its seams tougher than the toughest ilk, the toughest bark. In a way, that mass of bodies – or rather, that collection of people, must have cooled the earth considerably. As the boy looked on, separate from the crowd, the vibrant whites of their clothing almost fought back against the red and orange that was quickening towards them.
The boy felt his heart melt along with the grass, the bushes and the trees. Maybe from the heat, maybe from a little something more – the boy’s heart descended into a sweltering, slathering ball of hope, one that ached and longed to be a part of it. And so he leapt up, the chatter in his bones dissipating, and he tumbled towards the group.
Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, the flame grew closer. Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, the boy reached out. Sprinting, sprinting, sprinting, the flame could see the village now. Sprinting, sprinting, sprinting, he could make out their expressions.
His heart pulsated viciously in his chest – chaos attacking him from all sides. The heat, the strain in his legs, the burning sensation behind his eyes, the throbbing of his flesh. He made out his mother amidst the mass, and tackled her into a hug. He silenced his tears by rubbing his face into her shoulder. After a brief moment of shock, she smiled, and rested a hand on the top of the boy’s head, stroking it.
And with that, the flame swept over the village in a horrible tidal wave – rolling, seething, raging, tossing and turning and writhing as it spread from grass-tip to grass-tip – taking everything, everybody, and every last remainder of purity, with it.
​
24. Revenge
I wonder how good it would feel to push him off the side of the boat right now. To watch him drown in the wriggling and spitting sea. Would it give me relief? Catharsis? Or would it be empty? I couldn’t tell.
The storm wailed and howled in the sky high, high up above, twisting and turning and raging – much like the storm in my own mind.
“So?!” He shouted, over the vicious scream of the wind all around. “What’re we gonna do!?”
“I don’t know.” My voice is small. Weak. Meek. I can’t muster up the energy to shout, to look up, to do anything but do my best to ignore the cold, irritating feeling of the water slapping my cheek, over, and over, and over again.
“Whadd’you mean, you don’t know?!” He paced up and down the ship, beating his wrist against his temples and shooting me accusatory glances. Glances that only stoke the fire within me. “You’re the captain, man! You’re supposed to know!”
“This storm’s the biggest I’ve ever seen. Ain’t nothing like it, even in the records.” I shrank closer in on myself, tightening the grip I had on my knees.
A wave crashes into the hull, sending a horrible shudder through the bones of the rest of the ship. The shiver fills me as well – filling me with a deep and irrepressible panic.
“At least do something! You ain’t the only one scared shitless! Ya’ hear?!”
Something within me manages to crawl up from the deep, empty chasm of my lungs. A renewed burst of energy. “If I could do somethin’, don’t’cha think I would’ve by now? God, you’re such an imbecile!” I kneaded my forehead with my knuckle, shakily stroking my beard with my other hand. “God’s obviously forsaken us. If it’s so unbearable, just take an early swim, why don’t’cha?! Huh?!” The energy that had just began seeping from my lungs quickened, strengthened – expanding from a feeble wind to a hurricane. And it only grew, grew, grew, growing at a faster and faster rate by the moment; just as the storm above us was. I leapt up from the ground, and marched over to the man, grabbing him by his collar until my fingernails dug into my skin and my knuckles flushed white. “We’re a piece of fucking wood in the line of God’s fire! For heaven’s sake, get a grip on reality!” Like a snowball cascading down a snowy hill; it only grew, exponentially, at an exponential rate.
“We might’s well go down fighting, ey?! And I can’t direct this bloody thing!” Another wave slammed into the ship – the side this time, the side closest to where we were standing. The harsh water of the merciless ocean flooded the deck, ravaging the back of my neck as water crashed against my nape. It sent me tumbling down, bringing the man with me. My nerves were wrecked; inflamed like an infection. Like a cancer. And it only kept growing, spinning out of control. And, in God’s almighty name, it needed to be satiated.
After all the man had said. All the whispers, rumours, insubordination – all the aggravation, delinquency and threats – I simply could no longer stand him. Because of this wretched navigator, we ended up in this situation in the first place. My whole crew, who I’d worked with for nearing on a decade, had all died due to his vivacious impotence.
I roared, a hearty roar, a roar of anger, one that tickled that snowballing sensation – stimulated it, satiated it. That feeling is rage. I know it is. I learnt from my mother to not let that feeling overtake me. I know this is not the path God would want me to take either. But I could stop myself no longer. Like a water tank overfilled, I knew I was on the verge of bursting. And out here, in the middle of the sea, with nobody to watch except the churning waves – would it truly be the wrong thing to do?
I flung myself at him, ravenous and animal-like, crumpling his shirt as I plucked him from the deck. The weight cut even harder into the flesh beneath my fingernails. But I no longer cared. It only aided the growth of the feeling inside of me.
“W–what the fuck’re you doin’?” He asked, hurriedly, panting. I didn’t look at his face. “Hey! Hey, hey!” He struggled, whimpered, pulled against my grip – but I was many years his senior. I dragged him along the deck, silent, focused on the stormy horison. We slowly grew closer to the side of the ship. And at a similarly slow pace, I could feel the world heating up – as if the spray of the ocean was in fact not hitting my face – as if the blood in my veins was overheating, boiling. I creased my brow. “Stop, man, stop! I’m sorry, ‘aight?! I get it! I’m scared, just as scared as you!”
I wasn’t listening. I could only hear the boiling intensify in my ears.
I pushed him up against the side of the ship, leaning him over it so that he would plummet into the great oceanic abyss if I were to let him go. He fiercely clawed at my hand, scratching at it like a rabid animal, but I held strong.
“Get the fuck off me—” I let him go. He plummeted. I watched him as he did; I watched his eyes. Where I expected to see rage, anger, or hatred of some variety – instead, I saw fear. Confusion. Loss.
I suppose I have the answer to my question now. I grimaced, winced, let the intensity of my look soften. In truth, I didn’t feel catharsis. Nor did I feel empty.
I clutched at the sides of my head, moaning, groaning, as the boiling and the sound of a wave approaching grew louder and louder and louder, until my ears ached and my bones thrummed.
Instead of release, instead of freedom, I felt utterly sick.
A wave tipped the ship over, submerging it, swallowing it whole. The mightiest of all the waves yet, the very incarnation of the will of God, swallowed me whole, berating me, shattering me, drowning me—
​
25. Pain
I’ve been having the strangest dreams recently. They feel so surreal. Not real, inherently – but rather much like they are predicting the future. I can feel more and more of my memory being replaced by memories of dreams, and I can feel my subconscious taking it for reality. It’s a strange feeling. A worrying one, too. For if these dreams truly are the future calling out to me, then I’m unsure if I’ll be able to handle the pain of them when I meet them in reality.
I was thrust into the deep, searing black of night – the world around me sludge-like and vague. A dream. A dream, yet so incredibly painful despite it all. The thin membrane of dreamy dullness does little to nullify the pain that screams out at me from within the great black void. A bird, with great mighty talons, sweeps out from the darkness, blurry, morphing by the moment, hollering its sheer wail right at me. It slams into my eyes, pushing its talons up through my eyes and into my skull. My vision explodes from black to a wriggling, stabbing expanse of red in all directions – a wet, thrumming red that doesn’t dare let up, not for a moment, not even for an instant. It only grows, grows, grows—
I wake up, flinging myself from the harsh backbone of my bed, sweat clinging to every inch of my body. Reality has returned to me. I sigh, forcing the bubble of tension within my chest to burst, releasing a sweet pang of relief. But I hear a shrill squawk from outside my window. I’ve seen this before. I cover my eyes, my face, hurriedly, the tension reforming. But through the slits in my hands, I see it – it is merely a seagull. It lands on my windowsill, twitching its head to look at me, confusion in its eyes.
A knife shatters through the thin membrane of dullness, just as the bird’s talons had; breaking through the skin and bone of my back. I look over my shoulder, and see my lover. They thrust the hilt of the harsh, animalistic knife in deeper, deeper, and more of myself comes flooding out. I can feel that murky, dull consciousness of sleep leave me alongside my life, all trickling out from the poor, gaping wound. It’s as if my brain is being sucked down my spine, slowly being dragged towards the wound – and it is leaking out alongside my blood. Pins and needles, pins and needles, pins and needles—
I blink, and the pain is gone. And I am somewhere else entirely.
A vast desert of blue sand extends out before me. Utterly still, utterly silent – unperturbed by any of the chaos that preceded it. Yet, despite it all, the dullness of dreaming still clings to me; to my skin, to my brain, to the inside of my lungs. Through the sludge of confusion, I can feel an ominous presence pressing in from all around. The anticipation of more pain clouds my vision, fogs it up, darkens it – no. I look up, and see the desert being swarmed by dark, deep, murky clouds of rain and thunder and lightning. It flashes, sparks, fizzles and rages, bellowing its mighty, immeasurable hatred loud enough to shake the world and everything in it. Rain falls, thick and heavy; so thick that there is not enough air to breathe in between droplets of water. I pant, heave, the sands beneath my feet convulse and sink and shift and wail – struggling for air, suffocated by an ocean of rain all around. I fall to my knees, a horrible, screaming feeling erupting in my neck, flooding my throat, filling my gut, seeding an ache into my legs, my arms, my brain – cascading, getting worse by the moment, never giving in, only growing, growing impossible large—
I wake up once more. I’m sat at my desk, shivering and sweating. The seconds of respite stretch out for long enough to allow my nerves to reassemble and my breath to stabilise once again. I feel at my neck, absentmindedly, enjoying the feeling of air plummeting through it. I look down at my desk, and upon it, a chaotic spread of papers, pens, books, laptops and molten candle-wax is spread across it. Of course, I can recognise the order within that chaos. It’s my desk, after all. But looking upon it stops the passage of air down my throat; the task before me is so mighty, so harsh and animalistic, so vast, that I simply cannot bear to look at it. I can hear the squawking. I can hear the shink of a knife. I can hear the harsh rattle of thunder. A hand flies to cover my eyes, a hand flies to cover the small of my back, and my lungs burst out in a pant anew.
But nothing happens.
The world around me is still, lit by candlelight, utterly silent and utterly still. And yet, despite all that, I can still feel the heavy dullness of sleep clinging to me. I stay on guard, looking out for the next assault, the next sequence of dreams.
26. Hope
As I waded my way through the soft water with my oar, the hull of my small, wooden boat broke through it doubly so. It parted, and small, diaphanous ripples of water were sent dancing down the stream; demure, ordered, moving with the grace of a dove.
Fog clung to the horizon, needy, obscuring the skyline in every direction. A similar fog hung up above – a dainty white-grey spread of clouds.
The ocean waters hadn’t changed for a long time. However cliché it may sound, that was true for as far back as I could remember. Although, somewhere deep in my gut, I felt that that might not have been the case at one point. Perhaps, in the past that lies far beyond my reach, there was a time the fog hadn’t sank its gluttonous jaws into the skyline. Perhaps there was a time I could have seen the sun, piercing the veil of clouds high up above. But that didn’t matter so much to me anymore. All I wanted was to make landfall.
Land, yes, that’s what I needed. A little bit of rest for the muscles in my arms – for my eyes, focused and strained on that murky skyline, and for my brain, worn and torn from all the years of nothingness. All the years of endless sea, stretching in every direction, almost maliciously.
It’s all that had been on my mind for what felt like an eternity. As if I was half-asleep, and the same exact thought was repeating again and again and again, over and over and over. So, when the jut of a mountain peeked its beautiful, rocky face out through the membrane of fog, I almost felt confused by it. Sudden confusion, leaping joy, spitting ecstasy – a million-billion sensations all erupting like fireworks simultaneously in my chest, mixing, convulsing, almost overwhelmingly. I fell to my knees, clutching at my chest through my shirt.
I had made it.
I got up, with that explosive, vigorous amalgamation of sensations darting away from my torso and into my legs and my arms. I began to drag my oar through the waters once again, with harsher strokes this time; fevered strokes, ones that pushed back hard enough against the desperation in my arms that sweat began to form on my forehead.
But I kept moving. I had to.
The sea around me had cascaded into ripples, almost like a storm – the demure, ordered grace of it all had descended into a million whirlpools of madness in my wake. I continued, my eyes fixed on the place where the fog had parted by the will of the mountain-face, intent on the stark beauty of it amidst the grimy, murky grey all around.
It felt like another eternity – built upon the foundations of the uninspired, empty one that I had just left behind – before I got close enough to the mountain to see anymore. And my, did I see more.
There, at the foot of the mountain, was a shoreline. A glorious, golden shoreline, unjustly deformed by the omnipresent fog, yet still beautiful all the same. The mountain, too, was spangled by ores of many kinds; blue crystals, red jewels – so incredibly large.
My face finally permitted a smile to open up on my cheeks.
I slammed my oar into the water, pushing it back – sending a chaotic spray of water cascading backwards into the night – three times as hard as before.
I was almost there. I just needed to reach it.
It was so close now. Hope. Freedom from the murky waters all around. Freedom from the fear of the needy, clingy fog in all directions.
I was five oar-strokes away. Four. Three.
My expression intensified, the muscles on my face growing stiff in anticipation.
That golden shoreline. That towering mountain. The spread of land behind it. Just two steps away.
It was over. I had found what I was looking for. All the years of arduous rowing would finally come to an end.
In just one more stroke—
​
27. Torture
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I could only feel – feel the spiders and scorpions and slugs crawling around beneath my skin. The world was dark. Heavy. Unbearable. It closed in from all around, clawed at me, tore at my flesh until it leaked and bled. The pains were sharp, harsh, violently and uncontrollably angry. Angry at me. For no reason. At least not a reason that I could control.
Flash of pain after flash of pain, my skin was torn and cleaved asunder over and over and over, more and more little insects burrowed into my body – snails, mosquitoes, leeches – the feeling of them wriggling inside of me amplifying the endless whips of pain a thousandfold.
I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know who I was. I was born there, amidst the crashing cacophony of wails and shivers, born screaming. Born without a will, without a mind to make choices, without a working body to act on any choices I could make. I was out of control. I was a person, a human being, stripped and robbed of dignity, lashed by endless, omnipresent pain – with no choice in the matter.
The insects beneath my skin tossed and trembled, finding their way into the small gaps between my muscles, between my bones, gnawing away at the very fibres of my being. They were in my legs. My arms. My hands. My gut. My thighs. My neck. My skull. All of those little, wriggling bodies – completely separate from my will and control – were only digging into me more and more and more, despite my desperate desire for it all to stop.
I wondered if it ever would stop. If the insects would ever pardon my muscles and bones – if the whips would ever pardon my skin. I thought it was the logical thing to do. Someone was in pain. An inordinate, infinite amount of pain; so where is the mercy? Where is the sympathy? Whoever was doing this to me, whoever had stolen my memories, blinded me, was viciously attacking me, why were they doing it? What was the point of hurting me so? No human would ever do that. So I came to the conclusion that the perpetrator of this putrid act of aggression couldn’t be human at all.
And when I arrived at that conclusion, vision returned to me like air returning to lungs.
The room was still dark, but I could see now, yes. The room was tiny, claustrophobic, enclosed like a wine cellar. A whip snapped into my back, more intense this time. I let out a sky-shattering wail. I was getting closer.
The attacker was behind me. Fiercely, they slammed the whip into the flesh of my back over and over and over, at a predictable rate. Despite the gift of sight, the pain was still horrible – if anything, intensified – the whip lashing, the insects writhing. But I needed to push forward. Through the torrential, foggy world of pain, I gritted my teeth as hard as what I thought possible, and in the lapse between the blows, I quickly spun around to face my assailant.
And there, before me, was a sight unfitting of my newly-gifted eyes.
A figure, as tall as a door and as wide and one also, stood behind me. Whip raised. Sweating. Anger in it’s very stance. And in it’s face – or rather, where its face should be – a horrific, contorting mass of insects and beetles and bugs and leeches and slugs and all things green and nauseating bled out of the hole in it’s face.
The whip slammed into me again, ten times as hard. The pain was like a flame – a searing, white-hot flame, wild and animal-like, all-consuming, stripping me of all sense, vanquishing all thoughts in my head by replacing it with pain. My entire body throbbed, my mind ached horribly, and my vision closed up as the insects finally made it to my eye-sockets.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I could only feel – feel the spiders and scorpions and slugs crawling around beneath my skin.
28. Greed
The scales that made up my skin oozed a thin, slimy liquid as I crawled up the man’s arm, the chinks in that armour revealing little of the flesh beneath. Yes, so small were the holes in my proof, so little about me was exposed to the man. Yes, I would continue forward, tracing my way up his arm, unseen, hidden behind the husk of marble that protected me.
Marble. Yes, marble, how beautiful and solid it was. Marble was my first love.
Oh, how I must remain unseen. How I must remain single-minded in my movement up the man’s arm – how I must not let my thoughts stray too far. Yes, I must remain adamant, unthinking.
The man was strange-looking; with his high-risen eyebrows, his sunken jaw, the eyes that darted around their sockets like strange little rat-things. Rats, yes, what great food I make of rats. I bore my fangs, wide and wild, hissing as I tossed myself forward, towards the man’s neck – piercing his throat in a quick thrashing of my own neck.
My fangs. Yes, fangs, how powerful and solid it was. My fangs were my second love.
I relinquished the man from my powerful, fanged grip, hastily slipping off of him as he collapsed to the floor. I continued, single-minded, adamant, dead set on the next hand I was to steadily climb. I felt myself grinning – grinning with as much as my small, scaly face would allow – opening up my fangs to the air and the world, the blood dripping off them like honey.
I wouldn’t let anything interrupt this. God, this was so much fun.
The golden-tasting liquid lay beneath the skin of the next figure on the table; obscured behind their skin. A whole ocean of it, a whole ocean of that irrepressibly glorious liquid. Beneath their skin. If only they would peel it back themselves; allowing me to suck them dry.
Blood. Yes, blood, how delicious and feeble it was. Blood was my third love.
I zipped up the woman’s arm, tracing the same path I had before with her predecessor. Launching myself into her neck, the world was doused in that vibrant, heavenly gold, the liquid spraying everywhere, lathering me in her gift. Her gracious gift, the one she relinquished to me, with the same grace in which I relinquished her from my powerful, fanged grip in the next moment.
But, suddenly, a sharp pang of pressure erupted around my waist. A hand, a grabbing hand, harsh, merciless, cruel, caught me in its graceless grip. I writhed, slapping myself to and fro against its hand, to no avail. Its strength dwarfed mine a hundred fold, a thousand fold. It was unfair. Utterly and completely cruel. Like a greedy beast devouring a small forest-animal.
It lifted me up to face it, its face strangely orientated in a way I couldn’t understand; its brows did not retreat up into their hidey-holes beneath its bangs, its jaw was hard set, as were its eyes – leaking a colourless liquid and trained directly onto me. Piercing my eyes, gazing right into me, past my marble exterior.
I hissed, thrashed, relentlessly poured every last ounce of my soul into an attempt at escape. My hisses were obviously pained. Obviously meek. Obviously sympathetic. Yet, it retained its cold grip on me nonetheless.
In its other calloused hand, it raised a strange object; a piece of wood, with a strange, sharp, reflective material jutting out of it in an odd way. I could see my reflection in the object’s surface – my beady red eyes, my beautiful, solid marble exterior, my fangs bear for the world to see.
For the world to see.
God, I hated this feeling.
The feeling of eyes, pressing in on me from all sides, grew and grew and grew, judgement without parole cascading towards me, imminently, like an avalanche.
The beast that had me in its clutches raised the object to my throat, and in a quick movement, I thudded to the ground.
No. It was my head that fell. The rest of my body remained in its grip.
I thudded to the table, spinning so that I faced my body. Exposed. Open. Without marble to clad it. I attempted to hiss, but nothing came. I attempted to move my jaw, to wriggle – but nothing happened. I merely lay there, watching the liquids pour out of the body still clutched in the beast’s hand. It was a deep purple-blue; the complete opposite of the gold the humans possessed. It was embarrassingly dissimilar. Yes, shame was what overcame me as my marble facade had been lifted. And it doubled down when the true colour, the true nature of my thoughts and was what inside of me this whole time came tumbling out of me like a tidal wave.
Scatter-brained, directionless, my vision faded, the power and solidity leaving me – as feeble as blood, as feeble as human flesh.
​
29. Trust
“Please!” She yelled, heartily, towards the figure that was disappearing into the light. “Trust me!” She thrust her hand forwards, reaching for the figure. Desperation clawed at her muscles – her feeble, aching muscles – more intense than ever before. “I—” She started to speak, but the words choked up her throat.
She loved him. That’s what she wanted to say. But here she was, a being of The Darkness, disallowed to venture with him into The Light.
She wailed and wailed and wailed, hoping beyond hope that he would come back, that he could hear her voice. But before all of the air had left her lungs, he was gone. And with it, The Light collapsed inwards in a humongous explosion of gold.
From the residue emerged a pillar of crystal – a luminous crystal that echoed light.
His light.
It protested the darkness that had descended in the wake of the explosion, like a small candle-flame attempting to illuminate the dark side of the moon.
The woman of the darkness approached the crystal, slowly, meekly. She rubbed her face dry of tears, once, twice, three times, but they just kept coming. Through that fog of misery that clung to her eyes, she leapt from a tiptoe to a sprint. A deep, guttural wail erupted from within her lungs, horrible and long. She slammed herself into the crystal, sobbing at its foot.
“Why..?” She said, hushed. “You promised me… that we’d be together by the end of all this…” She ground her head against the crystal. “Why can’t you… just… be here with me?” She looked up, gazing at the darkness that hung above her with a growing disdain. “Oh, God, why have you put me in this situation? What…” Her voice grew hysterical now, grief swarming her like an angry nest of hornets.
The feeling of broken trust rippled throughout her. It was the most horrible kind of feeling – dark, murky, hate-filled. It left the taste of bile licking at the back of her throat, and invited nausea to swell up behind her eyes. With each moment that passes, the realisation of his disappearance grew larger and larger and larger, hotter and hotter and hotter, until she could no longer contain it – but even then, it kept on growing. It was cruel. Endless. Bestial.
“Why would… would you of all people… do this to me?” She shook her head. “You know full well what I told you about trust…” She bit her lip. “Did you even love me?! You said that you would let it all burn for me, didn’t you? You said didn’t care about The Light… you said… that…” But no matter what she thought, no matter what she said, she knew full well that this extended beyond her. That without this, both of their worlds – both the World of Light and the World of Darkness – would crumble under the weight of the portal that had opened up between them. Then both of them would be gone. She knew that, in this, he’d have saved many thousands of others that were just like them.
But despite that, despite all logic, the Woman of the Darkness still cried out, her heart still ached, and she still clamoured for any hint of her lover.
She looked up, inspecting the crystal closer. The jewel held a flame; an animated flame, one that flickered and fizzed and gave off a feeble inkling of light.
Raising herself to face it, forcing herself to smile, she addressed the flame as if it had ears, speaking to it as if it had a heart to feel.
“I’m sorry.” She started. “I know you’re a man of The Light. What I’m asking for is,” she sucked in breath, letting it out in a giggly gust, “not only difficult, but also wrong. Yet… you brought into my life the light of joy. Before you came, I did not know of anything like that. So I…” She bit her lip, fiercely fighting the need to grimace; keeping her smile wide and toothy. “I don’t know… how to exist without you.” The tears fell fully now, like a dam shattered. She pressed herself up against the crystal once more, silently bawling, silently aching.
30. Obsession
The fruit-tree was infinite. Infinitely tall, with infinite branches, holding infinite fruit. Purple, ripe, glistening under the brilliant light of the sun – nothing was more beautiful than this sight. After an eternity of trudging through the swamps and marshlands, I had found it.
Reaching up, I plucked one from the lowest branch, bringing it closer to my face. I could see into it; its flesh translucent yet glistening. It was as if, in the moment before I took a bite out of it, that the world took on a whole extra dimension. The world became colourful, where it had once been black-and-white.
It was juicy. Tasty. Easy on the mouth and lips, kind to the tongue and throat. With every bite, it only got sweeter and sweeter – the love I had for it growing in synchrony.
I sat there, beneath the shade of the tree, for what must have been hours. Mosquitoes didn’t dare nip at my skin, the horrid feeling of the marsh-water on my ankles dissipated as it the liquid dried up and cracked off like dead skin, and the once clammy humidity of the forest morphed into a feverous swell of ecstasy.
Once I had finished the first fruit, I reached up for another. It came easy enough. But it felt as if, as soon as I started to eat it – it would be reduced to its seed before I was satisfied. So I reached up again, and pulled another from the tree, letting the great beauty of the world wash over me again. The humidity of the world was ecstatic and bubbly once again. All irritations of the life that lay beyond the foot of the tree dissipated. And I was back under the shade, enveloped once again by the transcendental call of the fruit.
Transcendental, yes. That’s what it was. The taste of the fruit was so fresh, so liberating, so different than all of the petty qualms and irritations of life that came before it that it could only adequately be described as beyond. God must have put this fruit-tree here, in all its glory, to give me a purpose higher than the insignificant passings of life. Yes, he had given me a calling – a calling to consume the fruit.
But soon, the third fruit had melted away. And the last couple bites didn’t feel nearly as grand as the first. So, I reached up for another. This time, however, it did not come easy. I had to stand once again, rise to my own two feet, slap away a couple mosquitoes, just to reach the fourth. I did so quickly, as fast as my enraged limbs would allow me to go, for I did not want to be swallowed up by the swamp once again. And in my peripheries – God forbid the sight – I saw the end of the fruit-tree. The tippy-top, where it ceased to provide any more fruit.
No. It was a trick of the light. Silly me, had my eyes really been mistaken when I fully took everything in? Please. I can’t take a glance as proof over a hardy stare, can I?
But by the time that thought had concluded, the rest of the fruit had turned to ash in my mouth. A black, tar-like substance that possessed a rancid imitation of the fruit’s aftertaste. Spitting it out, I swiftly reached up for another, desperately reaching for the lowest-hanging fruit that was ever so slightly out of reach.
When had the number of fruits dwindled? How had it happened this quickly? How had I exhausted it so fast?
I managed to scrape a small minority of the fruit from the branch. But before I hurriedly slammed it into my mouth, I inspected it. And as sure as the swamp’s heat all around me, it was black as tar, and crumbled to ash in my hand.
I swallowed, pushing saliva down my throat. And when I looked back up at the tree – as if I were hallucinating – the tree had been picked utterly clean of fruit. God had abandoned me.
I pressed onwards, through the swamp, swatting mosquitoes, wading my way through the thick, black liquid of the marsh, ignoring the overwhelming heat all around by scrunching my eyes closed.
But when I opened them, a miraculous sight met them.
Before me, stood a fruit-tree. The fruit-tree was infinite. Infinitely tall, with infinite branches, holding infinite fruit. Purple, ripe, glistening under the brilliant light of the sun – nothing was more beautiful than this sight.
I reached up—
​
31. Evil
What’s the difference between Good and Evil? Where is the line in the sand?
As I rose from the murky, abyssal canyon, I could feel that frustrated line of thinking rise with me. It gorged on my heart like an irritated, starved beast of some cruel, carnivorous kind, ripping into its flesh with a seething, reckless abandon.
Why didn’t it all just disappear? All these standards, perspectives, stances, menial debates over what someone should or shouldn’t do? None of it matters to me when my people are faced with obliteration.
The swirling wreaths of shadow envelop me like a dress; long, billowing in the air, misty and murky as clouds. It wrapped around my skin with the consistency of silk, soothing my skin – but did little to calm the beast still writhing in my chest.
I reached the point where my head peaked out of the canyon and out onto the plateau above it. It was a snowy expanse; white in all directions, as still as water and as silent as a desert. And submerged in that still silence, across the snowy expanse, a horde of humans sat, quiet, watching. It was as if they were a part of the silence; as if they were not sentient beings that lived and breathed and made decisions based on their own conscience, but rather mindless creatures that supplicated themselves to the will of the harsh, cold landscape all around. I suppose, in a way, that immediate impression of the human’s army wasn’t too far off.
The shadowy dress writhed and seethed at the sight – folding around my skin, digging into it as if it were a child clinging to its mother due to a sharp stabbing of emotion. The intensity of my heart increased with it.
Yes, my heart – I wonder if these people knew I had one. Doubly so, I wonder if they’d care. I suppose because of what my ancestors did, to them, I am Evil. So, in their eyes, what separates me as a living, breathing being of flesh from my grandfathers? Do I not have a right to live my life separate from the sins committed before I was even born into my flesh?
I had fully ascended from the darkness of the cavern now, and, receding from a smooth hover, touched down my bare feet on the snowy floor. It was terribly cold, horribly disorientating. I wonder if they felt that too.
My eyelids hang solemnly as I inspected the ground. A wave of lethargic disappointment fell onto me, rather suddenly. A sudden disenamourment with the back and forth. With the yin-and-yang. To me, in that moment, Good and Evil fell apart beneath the frosty clutches of the snow and the constricting cool of the misty air, so that I could no longer give a definition for either.
I dragged my eyes, up, towards the skyline. It was still littered with humans – people, just like me – as still and as silent as statues aside from their helmet’s ponytail flapping wildly in the wind. And all so suddenly, after the echo of a hearty, croaky voice, the skyline began to draw closer in a flurry of movement. Funny, the sound of them trudging through the thickets of snow didn’t yet reach my ears.
The shadow that enveloped me raged, swirled, and salivated in preparation for its next meal. But I, the one cloaked by the shadow, cloaked by the Evil, could feel nothing but the disillusioning chill of a cruel, cold, and utterly merciless winter.
​
32. Despair
The fog crawled in at a disturbingly slow pace – purple, clingy, clamouring for every corner of the forest. It came in the form of swirling wreaths; small fingers of mist that daringly stretched beyond the greater mass of purple fog – ever so hesitantly, almost fearfully – advancing further and further into the forest.
My forest.
Those reaching fingers drew increasingly close, lapping at the base of my hut. The purple rubbed sharply against the homely browns and sodium-lit oranges, constructing a terrible contrast. The fingers, similar to ants or beetles or some kind of bug, crawled and slithered up the stairs that invited them up and out onto the patio.
What the fog was, I do not know. But, like prey caught in the eyes of a predator, I felt its interminable malice from every direction.
With a pitchfork in hand, and a deep shudder in my gut, I poked at one of those invading tendrils of fog, my throat possessed by a sharp and quick wail. It was only a short attack – but when I pulled my makeshift weapon back, the part of it that had entered the fog had seemingly disappeared, as if dissolved or stolen by the insidious mass of vapour.
I dropped the pitchfork, now beheaded, slowly and shakily retreating into my home. All around my home, the fog now had me surrounded. At first, I had thought it was something mindless, merely an object of nature’s whims – something that would have filled the forest in an orderly, logical manner. But instead, the reality was revealed to me; it was surrounding me. It had a choke-hold on my meek, pitiful hut. And, however morbid or personifying it may seem – I felt a strong feeling emerge in my gut; that the fog was enjoying this. That the fog was enjoying the process of choking me, teasing me, rotting away the edges of my hut – my sanity – seeing what its movements would make me do. It was an utterly cruel thing. A voiceless, faceless, and heartless beast, one that imitated meekness and sorrow but, at its core, was simply sadistic.
Or maybe that was the fear speaking. Maybe that was the chilling feeling that presided in my intestines that was talking. Perhaps it hadn’t gotten me surrounded – and it really was nature rightfully asserting its providence. But malice was all I could take from this phenomena. Sadistic, cruel, heartless, faceless, voiceless malice.
I retreated inwards, banging my knee against something or other as I stumbled. The pain stabbed at me for a moment, and I fell to the ground – but I couldn’t stop. I crawled closer inside, into the smothering warmth of the inside of my hut. When I did, a kind of comfort fell over me; comfort that dampened the despair closing in from every direction. Yes, I had been here before. I was safe here. Whether or not that was logical, that was what my heart would have me believe.
But, as sure as night follows day, a window shattered, and the purple, hazy, distorting and discordious fog came pouring in with a sudden and all-but demure swiftness.
I choked on my spit, struggling meekly with the weakness clinging to my limbs, the ache still clutching at my knee, and the shattered remains of that brief comfort. And as the fog rolled over me, dissolving all that away – it filled me with the most horrible, terrible feeling of despair.
One that was strangely familiar. A feeling, or perhaps a scent, that I had smelled and avoided a million times over, in all aspects of my life.
​
33. Peace
The doves soared overhead, overlooking the sprawling, autumnal expanse of plains and fields of our mighty country, a shrill song escaping their beaks. It refused to echo; it would merely be swallowed up by the great, swallowing sky. They were twin doves, of the most beautiful kind – wings made of what looked to be pure marble, eyes solid onyx gems. Reflected in those crystalline eyes, the plains, fields and trees must have seemed meagre and small; as if they were a prerequisite of life.
I watched the twins fly, from a field not too far below them. They soon passed beyond the scrupulous reaches of my vision, fading into nonexistence on the skyline. A small, wimpish zephyr slapped me in the face, knitting its fingers betwixt the small strands of hair on my chin. They stood terse – like straw – adamant in where they stood, yet always supple enough to lean with the wind before returning to its original position.
The mangled corpse of the child reached out to me from within the backs of my eyelids, its fingers, bathed in that horrible sea of crimson, shuddering as they stretched out towards me. Prying. Needing.
When I open my eyes once again, the crimson is washed away by a diaphanous tide of grass-greens and leaf-browns.
The wind picks up for a moment, almost winter-like – sending a brief shiver up my spine. I lick my lips. I clench my jaw. The world keeps on spinning, and this sight always returns to me. Always. No matter how many times I am forced to blink, this peace-stolen land remains always the same.
The wind crashes into my face, harder, forcing me into a wince, and then a blink—
There it was again. The child. Deformed and brutalised, on the floor of the hut. Its flesh was viciously splayed, like ripped cotton-wool. Its eyes were dead and dirtied; its sightless cornea tainted by the soil.
I open my eyes once again, my head trained on the grassy earth at my feet. Even if I were to hazard a look in between the grass, I doubt I could see the dirt with my naked eye. But, morbidly, I could most certainly feel its horrid squelch beneath my boot.
I grimaced, and looked up.
The sky was barely invaded by clouds; it was a great ocean of blue, as if it were one, mighty mirror reflecting the one below it. I raised my chin, also, not allowing the wisps of wind to tease at my eyes any longer. I continued to gaze off into the horizon, analysing every peaceful corner to its very last fibres.
Our mighty country was as tranquil as could be, after our service. After my service.
I struggled to keep my eyes peeled. My eyes were beginning to dry up, my focus was beginning to waver… no. I reasserted myself, hazarding a cough.
The wind swept across the plain with a harshness I had never felt before – ripping into my eyes, making looking upon this peace-loving land as painful as needles stabbing into my eyes. I tried, with all the will I could muster, to keep my eyes peeled. But at this point, it wasn’t my desire to admire my surroundings that kept my eyes peeled, no. I was barely noting it anymore. It was the desire to not see what was permanently seared onto the backs of my eyes.
But, in the face of nature’s anger, I was as weak and malleable as the wimpish tufts of hair on my chin.
The dead child took a hold of my face, shaking violently, chaotically. It rubbed its cold, crimson-bathed, mangled and splayed fingers into my cheeks, marking my face with a permanent, slimy reminder of it. Its blood. And when it looked at me – no humanity could be deciphered from its gaze. Or rather, no life. Where perhaps an accusatory glare or a pleading grimace should have been, only the stark nothingness of death and grime clung to its eyes.
“Don’t forget.” It said, through ineffably still lips. “Don’t forget me.”
When I opened my eyes once more, it seemed as if the child’s shivering shudder was contagious, and I had caught it. With a small moan leaking from my throat, I crumpled to my knees, clutching viciously at the skin of my scalp.
I didn’t dare look up. I didn’t dare try to avoid it any longer. I merely stared at the hints of soil behind the veil of grass, blinking repeatedly, viciously, over and over and over and over again.
​
34. Loyalty
“Where do your priorities lie?” The man asked. “With friendship, or morality?”
The canyon sprawled and spread itself open – airy and spacious – so that alleyways of light coming from the sun slammed into the skin of my face. It was a hot and humid day, so it almost felt like my skin were to melt away under the sun’s anger, the sun’s prying gaze.
“Answer me, then.” The man sat, disgruntled and ragged, on the dusty earth. Adorned with only a loincloth, his wrinkled and saggy skin was also exposed to the sun in its full might. Hampered and struggling, his swaying movements back and forth seemed riddled by an inherent sort of weakness – a shivering, shaking weakness that plagued only those who went long periods of time without food or water or sleep. “Go on!” He repeated.
“W–well…” I began, shimmying a step backwards.
“Just leave them! We don’t have space or the time to deal with these manky ass kinda beggars.” My friend said, placing a hand on my shoulder. I looked over at him, and within his murky green eyes – therein lay a strange look of apprehension. It was an almost accusatory look, and it truly dug deep into the crevices of my soul.
Almost as much as the sun beat down on my skin.
“I am not a beggar,” the man croaked, his voice awfully shrill. “I am but a man. My destitution does not detract from my humanity, thank you very much.”
“Oh, you bore me with your semantics.” My friend said, tightening his grip on my shoulder. “Bloody riddler. We have no time for your superfluous word games.” His hand left my shoulder, and he trudged over to our cart.
“I would argue your avoidance of the issue, and your playing into the fallacious idiocy of remaining wilfully ignorant of my words is in fact more superfluous, at least in the manner of being grotesquely and severely anti-intellectual.”
“There he goes again…” My friend waved his hand dismissively above his head, as he reached down to the wheel of the cart, unlatching it from where it had been chained on the side of the road.
The man turned his attention back to me.
“What is your choice going to be, then?” He asked.
“Ignore him!” My friend said, his voice cautiously loud. “He’s tryna trick you.” My heart seemed to thud along in agreement – and with that, a sudden storm erupted in my chest along with it. A strong storm, one emboldened by the memories of laughter I had with my good friend. The good memories of the times spent drinking, the times spent with women, of tricky sales made and the many, many failures we had endured together. It was an overpowering sort of feeling, one that clouded over the idea of appealing to the morality of the situation. Or at least that’s how I’d describe the feeling in retrospect. In the moment, it was a lot more fiery, a lot more one-sided of a feeling. One that didn’t even attempt to bare witness to the other side.
I turned away, walking over to our cart. I began to help my friend unlatch the cart.
“You’ll regret this.” The man said. “Karma exists, you know. It’s more than mere spiritual mish-mash.”
I turned back, and saw him looking directly into my eyes. From them, a horrific, cold soul radiated from them – a truly black and icy soul that scraped into me like a starved child raggedly working away at food clinging to the bottom of a bowl.
“Karma is as real as gravity. As real as the forces that created this canyon. As real as the sun beating down on your face.”
A shiver ran up my spine. I could truly feel his eyes boring into mine; as if invisible spears had shot out of them and slammed right into me. The very definition of a piercing gaze.
But yet, despite that almost inhuman look that had possessed him, I looked away.
When we once again picked up our pace along the road, leaving the old beggar behind, a kind of tranquil befell me. How ironic it was, seeing as we – food merchants – had refused a starving beggar passage in our cart to the next city. But in that moment, I didn’t dare go against what my friend wanted. I mean, sure, I could’ve done something. My voice is and should be equal to his – but I didn’t feel the need to oppose it. If anything, in that moment, I just felt a kind of freedom from the need to go against my friend. Freedom from the need to put myself in conflict’s way. Because, I mean, it’s a stranger! I don’t need to do anything that could jeopardise my relationships to satisfy a destitute, manky beggar.
But as soon as I thought so, the world grew dark; as if enveloped by a shadow. The glorious wrath of the sun was snuffed out, and as I looked up and saw the rock-slide come crashing down the side of the canyon towards us, my face contorted into one of horror—
​
35. Madness
When I had finally clawed my way out of my dreams, I was beset with a feeling of similar blackness. The sweat clung to the dip on my chest – lit by a sodium lamp – so that the small beads of liquid were accentuated against the peach background of my skin. My chest rose and fell, sharply, frequently, expanding and detracting like some feverous, bulbous wart that swelled and shrank as it threatened to explode.
I had two shadows. One that fell in the opposite direction to the light beating against my face. The other hovered at the end of my bed.
The panic wriggling around in my heart didn’t dare falter. My lungs were still starved of oxygen, desperately struggling to fill the void in my alveoli.
The room around me was dark – the very archetype of a shadow – so deep and black that I could only barely make out my twin shadows. My bed was in a horrible jumbled mess; the covers were lopsided, unmade, and wet with sweat. I flung them off of myself, and lifted myself from the sturdy backbone of my resting-place. The cold nipped at me – except, from the inside out – like little creatures of ice were attempting to burrow through my skin and out into the darkness of the callous world beyond my body. Yes, that clammy, silent darkness, the same darkness that seemed to stare back at me. Yes, I could feel its eyes, just as prey can feel the gaze of a predator. A horrible, pressing feeling that slammed into me as I walked.
And as I walked, the perpendicular shadows followed me like a tail. And as I walked, I swayed from side to side – my mind turning to sludge beneath the gaze of the darkness.
Alongside those little icy fiends beneath my skin, fiends of weakness clawed at my flesh also. Staggered by their influence, I shook as I swayed.
I, I, I. I could not escape it. Every thought, every sensation, it all started or ended with me. I was stuck inside my body, stuck inside my mind, shackled to my existence like a bird enveloped by a glacial cage.
I gritted my teeth, raising my hand to my face, kneading my eyes, attached to my brain via my optical nerve, attempting to still the obdurate torrent of worry and fear that chuckled and howled within the confines of my heart. It was sickening to my ears. Deafening to my gut. I could not seem to eradicate myself from my mind, no matter how much I yearned for it, no matter how much it hurt to exist within my skull.
There was not a single moment’s solace for me beneath the pressing gaze of the darkness, not a single moment’s solace for me when locked up with my brain in the battleground that was sleep. In every moment, waking and sleeping, I spent that time trapped in a vicious cycle of pain. Because my mind tumbled around in circles, churning and swirling and shifting like a storm-battered coastline.
Words cannot express how I feel. Because what I feel, at its core, is madness. Week after week of insomnia, years spent in a constant tussle with my own mind – no. I don’t think you get it. I think that you’re wondering what I’m blabbering on about. And I think you’d be perfectly reasonable in not understanding. I think you’d be much better off that way.
I collapsed to my knees, not ten paces from my bed, clutching at my straw-like hair and tugging strands free. And when I looked up – I sat face to face with the face of the darkness. It was the very picture of shadow, the very picture of the malice hidden within my madness. I could not even dare to attempt a description of it. But I will tell you this: it truly did feel like an omnipotent force. It felt, to me, like I was looking upon the spawn of God. It felt, to me, like I was looking upon that second shadow once again, the shadow that had now dared show me its face.
Whatever you’d like to call my curse – insomnia, insanity, inflammation of the brain – I could see it, fully, in its broken, shattered, eternal glee.
​
36. Control
The twin dolls shimmied around by the man’s direction, waving their hands and strutting along the table according to the whims of his strings.
The air in his room was still and tranquil – not too hot, not too cold, not too open nor claustrophobic – just right. With every fevered breath the man took in, more of that perfectly acclimatised air fell down his throat like dollops of honey, filling him with a tingling sensation from his neck to his gut. The dolls at his disposal spun and danced and waved in an illustrious display, growing quicker and quicker as the man grew and grew in elation.
It was a pointless dance, ultimately. There was no rhythm of structure to it, no music to go along with it. Yet, the man, at the helm of two beings, felt utter and complete satisfaction with himself – a kind of superiority over the dolls, the same satisfaction a king might feel looking upon their subjects.
The door to the room, which stood directly behind him, seemed to loom over his shoulder – watching his play as it played out. From the cracks in the door, there came small, strange flashes that blinked from beneath the door – strings, puppeteer’s strings, ones that appeared when the moon gave them light, and disappeared when the moon didn’t.
The man continued to enjoy his play, his creation, mindlessly directing the dolls in random directions. His joints jolted around in random directions, as if tugged by strings themselves, increasing the chaos that was now growing to be synonymous with the movements of the dolls at the man’s discretion. Quick, jagged, unnatural, the dolls whipped around each other like debris in a tornado, and as the man watched them, mindlessly, he caught a short and stifled glimpse of one of the doll’s eyes. Human eyes. Eyes, unnaturally real, accusatory, looking directly back into his.
With an alarming revolt, the man’s arm was sharply tugged backwards by the strings beneath the door, sending him crashing out of his chair and skidding across the floor. He let go of his strings, letting the puppets go flying also. A muscle flickered to life on his forehead, forcing his eyebrows down into a furrowed look of confusion. The air, that was once still and warm, had now been disrupted. It was now cold. Spacious. Drafty. And the man hated it.
The strings attached to his joints tugged sharply at him again, sending him crashing into the looming door-frame. It sent a bolt of pain into the small of his back that quickly spread throughout his body, throbbing and aching like a flesh-wound. But he didn’t dare turn his head to look at the door. He kept his eyes locked on the table he had just been sitting at, almost desperately clinging to the moment before he had been dethroned from his seat, desperately wondering how he could free himself, rid the room of the strange, uncomfortable air that was now pouring in, and take back his throne and begin his play once again.
But despite that burning desire, the strings on his joints did not detach. Instead, they restrained him tight, pulling him a little further back into his room to allow for the door to creak open. And as it did, more and more of that chilling air flooded into the room, displacing the curtains, ripping through his hair like a comb, slamming into the windows and causing them to shudder.
He did not dare turn to look. He furiously locked his neck in place, refusing the incessant tug of the string forcing him to turn. Yet, despite the strength in his muscles and the strength of his will, his head did turn, and he was faced with the outside.
At the door to his small hut, stood on the welcome mat, was his puppeteer. A flash of lightning fell in the forest behind the puppeteer, illuminating its face amidst the darkness. The face of God.
​
37. Justice
The scales of liberty swayed from side to side, vicariously, dangerously. The two sides acted as strange, disc-like eyeballs; peering into the deep and black soul of the detainee before them. Said detainee shivered and trembled beneath that gaze – the sheer weight of the gaze of Justice was immeasurable. To the man, a meek and malaise member of the fold of society, Justice had a weight about her that was truly unequivocal.
She stood before the detainee, the world around them colourful, but also fractal-like; in every one of those colours, therein lay another colour, which in turn harboured its own pattern and internalised colour, and so on. That fractal stretched to cover everything in this strange world; the ground, the horizon, and the sky. Whilst it was feverishly warm and overwhelming, whilst it was difficult to comprehend – it was far more warm, far more comforting, than the filthy look of cool composure stricken upon Justice’s face. Her skin was a brutal, cold grey. She was cold in both heart and body – a statue. Yes, she was a statue; a group project worked on by all meek and malaise members of the folds of society, so that she may punish the few that wrong the whole.
“What’s my punishment?” The detainee said, small and morose.
“Execution.” Justice returned. Her voice was slow, completely impartial to it all. She spoke as if she were ordering a meal at a fast food place; but she had no capacity for understanding the pleasures of human taste-buds. She spoke as if she were reading off a script for advertisement; but she had no capability of comprehending why one might want to pay for the product she was selling.
A ball of energy – protest – lay dormant yet agitated within the detainee. “What can I do to right my wrong? I don’t wanna die.”
Justice did not respond. Her gaze did not shift. Her lips remained sealed, and the scales did not tip.
“Say, even if I did do what I’m being accused of – I want, more than anything, to live.” The detainee’s voice was monotonous, forcibly so, but was crumbling under the weight of their words. “You’ve threatened me with death. It’s not like I’m going to re-offend.” They repeatedly bit at their top lip. “I—” They cut themselves off, briefly. “I’m not the same person that did what I did.” Their voice descended in pitch, becoming quieter, more shaky. “If you sent me back in time, into my body when I did it, I certainly wouldn’t do it. So you’re punishing the wrong person.” They looked up at Justice, wells of tears forming in their eyes. “There’s nothing I can do to take it back. So my life is forfeit. How is that right? I’m a human being, gifted with the grandeur of both joy and sorrow. I have hands to work with, and a mind to use. Keeping me around would be a benefit to everyone, don’t’cha think?” Their voice split, the sobs fully emerging now. “I’ll work. I’ll work my ass off. I just… don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna spend the rest of my God-given life in regret and self-hatred. I wanna… change. I wanna live a better life.” They sucked in a sharp torrent of breath through their teeth. “Can you grant me that, Lady Liberty?”
Justice did not respond. Her gaze did not shift. Her lips remained sealed, and the scales did not tip.
“Execution.” She repeated, with the enthusiasm of an underpaid overworked university student; but she had no concept of pain or suffering or empathy for those stuck in impossible situations. She was Justice. She was here to punish. So when she lowered her hand to tap the detainee on the skull, as it popped off like popcorn in a fryer, she felt nothing, said nothing, refused to even flinch.
Because empathy wasn’t her responsibility. Her responsibility was death.
​
38. Innocence
The baby wailed in their mother’s arms, their cries muffled by the sound of the hail and snow pelting the earth. The baby wailed – wailed and wailed, on and on – the sound shrill and immensely heavy on the ears. With each bleat the baby let off, their mother winced. With each shivery jolt of pain the baby experienced, another tear added to the well brewing in her eyes. With every step she took up the snowy mountain, the pin-pricks of pain were born anew, born sharper – yet, she had to press on. The weather’s vicious onslaught continued unabated, beating at the pair with the malice of an angry God – yet, she had to press on.
Her pants were immense; as heavy as the baby’s wails. And the fog all around them gleefully swallowed up those sounds. Each step she took felt empty, null and pointless. The snow she sank her ankles into had the same piercingly cruel coldness to it as the last step had brought on. She looked down to her child, folding her chin so that she could regard them with warmth; a warmth that would thaw the child from the frost that had now began to cling to its face. Battling the frost that had found its way into her muscles, she lowered her head, and planted a small, meek kiss on her child’s forehead.
In that moment of contact, the small whisper of a scent that had managed to remain with the baby drifted up her nostrils. And for a moment, whilst surrounded on all sides by a blistering typhoon of cruelty – her mind receded into a memory. A memory of this same place, not six months ago.
The mountainside had been a vivacious thing; perhaps not an idyllic, heaven-like spread of flowers that reached for the skyline, but rather had a certain personality to it. Where the flowers grew in small, dainty patches, she knew the names of each flower. She knew the consistency and feeling of each flower if you were to take it between your thumb and forefinger. And that had been the setting of her baby’s birth. The sodium-lit room where she gave birth was as close to her heart as her child had been when it was still inside of her – in a hut nestled in a crook of the mountain she had grown to know so well.
But here it was, smothered and dashed by that horrible, sky-bound cruelty.
It was then that her baby opened their eyes from amidst their wild wails. It looked around, scanning the white of the snow, the pain on their mother’s face, silently taking it all in. A sharp tug of pain further erupted with the mother, inflaming the base of her throat. She pulled the child in, close, tight, pushing onwards, up the mountain, up the tracks of rock and what-should-be-grass that she knew off-by-heart, the mountain she could navigate blindfolded.
Within her swirling, tumbling mind, a newfound determination arose. A determination that broke free of the worry and panic and pin-pricks of pain. Step after step, breath after breath, the mother of the baby pressed onwards, onwards, up the snowy mountain.
​
39. Lies
I hate lying, and I hate telling the truth as well.
My hand caught alight, and the pain that ravaged it was simply unbearable.
“Is that true?” She asked. The pain intensified.
“Yes.” My voice was as smooth and unperturbed as could be. The darkness of the apartment – lit only by the moon beyond the window and the light from the room down the hall – was as present and real as her unknowing face, her pure eyes. My vision seemed to tunnel around her, the world becoming incredibly clear, so viscerally real. “You know I hate lying.” That felt like an insult to my tongue. It felt like an excuse. A manipulation. But, really, believe me, it was the truth.
The flame that clung to my hand remained hot and burning – burning me, kneading away at my skin until it flaked off and spun into the air like dust.
I burned, so nobody else had to.
She clutched at one arm with the other, leaning on the wall with both her body and her head. She gave me an endearing, small look – one that obviously crowned a deep-seated appreciation that could only be seen in the crinkles that surrounded her eyes.
“Thanks.” She said, her voice quiet, her voice subtly crackling. Crackling, like the fire that intensified up my arm. It really did intensify; it engulfed my entire arm. But I refused to wince, to show the pain that angrily bit at me – the pain that thrashed and wailed like the throes of an enraged child – for fear that she would reach out towards me, attempt to rub it better, and catch the flame upon herself.
The night went on, we had fun, and the flame largely subsided. But still, in the very backwaters of my mind, the shivering of the flames lapped at the pool of my awareness – keeping me conscious of my lie.
It was several days after I had caught aflame that I was faced with knitting a lie once again. My boss asked me if I was feeling alright, since I hadn’t managed to meet my quota. The flame burned brighter, white-hot, and enveloped the left side of my face and clung doggedly to the skin of my rib-cage.
“You alright?” He must’ve said.
“Yeah, just caught a tad bit of insomnia’s all. I’ll stay a bit overtime to make up for it.” It was searingly hot, tear-beckoningly hot, so much so that if he had stayed in my office-block for but an instant longer, I’m sure it would’ve burned out my eyes from the inside, choked up my throat and tore my face into two. And so it did right as his eyes glanced off of me, and I collapsed as much as my chair would allow me to.
I had a dream following this. A dream about fire. In it, I was brutally cold, but the world around me was in utter carnage. The woman I loved, the colleagues I treasured, all were up in flame. Whilst I couldn’t pinpoint the reason, whilst I couldn’t remember why they were being torn apart by the flames – it was as if the words of my truths were carved into the feverous, wavy hands of the fire, if that makes sense at all.
So, when I woke up, and my entire body was in the turmoil of the pain of the fire – I swallowed it down, refusing to let the harsh truth of my words escape. No matter what, my tongue must not slip. My words must be articulated and shaped like a statue of a Greek god.
I could not allow my world to be engulfed by flames. Because if the world is aflame – even if in body I am cold – in truth, I would be engulfed also.
​
40. Intimacy
Amidst the wide, wide ocean, looking up into the wide, wide sky, I settled my eyes upon the crescent moon. It was almost completely enveloped by the shadow – it was new moon – the terminator barely lenient enough to reveal the moon’s light.
I stood upon a rock, alone in the night, distant from all things. Distant from land, distant from the sea that lapped at my bare toes, distant from the moon up above. The sea foam I had risen from had receded now, dissolving into the inky waters.
I could feel that isolation consuming me; I could feel the teeth of the harsh coldness all around gnaw at me as if I were inside the mouth of some great monster. Indeed, a monster; a grotesque and cruel monster in every essence, so callous and brutish, so omnipresent and cold that it seemed to be one with the empty, distant world.
I reached out, up, up, up, towards the veiled, distant new moon, my fingers stretching, yearning, my muscles wriggling beneath my skin like a mass of subterranean insects. That sensation, that yearning – filled me with a sort of intimacy that felt most closely attuned with who I was. I was not the distance between things, I was the stark opposite. I learned that about myself as I reached out to close the distance between me and the beauty of the moon up on high; I learned something about myself for the first time since I had emerged from the foam of the sea.
Yet, there was a limit to how far I could reach. There was a point that my joints locked, my fingers could reach and yearn no further, and that horrible realisation slammed into me like a bird slamming into clear glass – I knew not the limitations of my body. Thinking about it made me cold. It stood as the pure opposite to the warmth that had been growing within me as my hand got closer and closer towards the crown jewel of the body of the sky. It was morbid. Terrifying.
My hand sank by my command, dejectedly embracing the cold reminder of distance that followed. Oh, to be heated by the sun, to be taken by the flame of proximity, to dance around in the light with the vivacity of a child and forget the shadow, forgetting the distance. That was, undoubtedly, the desire that was sparked alight within me – it was the fire that filled the darkness of the night that stood separate from me in all directions.
And as the waves lapped against the rock I stood upon and teased at the skin of my ankles, I knew I needed to find something to be close to. The sheer need to be close to something, the deep order carved into my flesh – it refused to fall prey to the ravenous clutches of separation and distance any longer.
I dove headlong into the sea, piercing the surface and truly absorbing the cold that fully enclosed me. But this cold was different from the one I had been born into – it was a cold I could truly feel, a cold that pressed up against my skin, one that allowed me to melt into the world. And so, as I made way for land somewhere beyond the horison, I gave myself up to the chill of the ocean I had emerged from.
​
41. Grief
The river stretched on for an eternity – it a slow, wallowing walk of a stream, yet spanned from one end of the universe to the other. It meandered at the pace of a sloth, yes, but it was certainly moving. It lazily deserted the horizon upon which the sun was slowly setting – the sun that was descending so incredibly gradually that it almost didn’t feel real to the woman – tracing its way towards the moon’s side of the world.
The woman’s hair fluttered amicably in the feeble wind, shivering in place similar to the grass at her bare feet. The grass knit between her toes, golden and soft. That brought on a soothing sensation – the sleep-like feeling that clung, lamenting, to your muscles after rising from sleep. Beside the woman, sat a figure in a cloak. They were utterly isolated from the world; as much within it as the grass, yes, but it almost seemed like it were painted with a different brush, written in a different font. It did not meld with the sun’s vivacious spring of colours. And it sat there, as still as a statue, gazing towards the same place on the skyline as the woman did.
“Are you going to finish your journey?” The being in the cloak asked.
“Not yet.” The woman’s toes curled. “Look.” She released her elbow from the lethargic grip of her opposing hand, using it to instead point at the auburn sun on the horizon. “It’s a pretty view, wouldn’t you say?” The reds, pinks, and splashes of purples mixed and swirled to form a harmony of a sky, the clouds illuminated by said colours, forming into order-less shapes like molten clay left un-moulded.
“Would you stand here and watch this sunset, forever?” The being in the cloak asked.
“…maybe.” She said, feeling at her hair absentmindedly. “Is… is that okay?”
The being in the cloak did not respond.
“I suppose… I don’t want it to end. Even if it is over.” She fiddled with the strands of gold that fell to her shoulders, letting the light of the dying sun fill them, allowing them to make her sparkle. “It was a fun time. A long, long day – I suppose you could call it, in this context.” She let go, instead gesturing her hands to the world around her. “Metaphors, metaphors. My soul sure does like metaphors.” She turned to the cloaked being. “This is a dream, right?”
The being in the cloak did not respond.
“If it is… let me sleep a little longer, ‘kay? I’ll be fine with a late morning tomorrow.” She sighed.
They stayed like that for another eternity. The rustle of the wind through the grass remained consistent and small, the river still rolled away from the setting sun at that same, dejected pace, and the cloaked being still didn’t move.
“Do you feel any desire to go back?” The being in the cloak asked.
“Sure as Judgement, I do.” Her voice remained calm – but it tilted slightly, shifting towards a lower pitch, a more unstable pitch. “I’m scared. When… when the sun sets, let’s say, what am I supposed to use to find my way around? The moon? No way.” She shook her head, meekly. “Letting the river run its course… I wonder what he meant when he said that. It doesn’t seem to move very fast, at least in this dream. And if dreams are a reflection of the mind, I suppose this is proof that I can’t move on. Man…” She looked up, towards the slowly darkening sky. “This’s depressing.”
“Do you regret?” The being in the cloak asked.
This time, she paused for a good few seconds. An answer didn’t perk its head up like it had done before. She thought back to the good old days, the autumn feathers, the warm grip of a scarf, the feeling of forehead touching forehead. Yes, all those endearing, prickly emotions came bubbling up in the place of words. She stretched her bottom lip tight against her teeth, viciously battling those firecracker-like emotions, holding down the fort that were her tear-less eyes.
“Maybe.” She said, her voice wimpish and crackly. “But there ain’t much I can do about that.” She watched the river in its slower-than-slow pace, loosely dragging her eyes along its radiant surface. The sun gleamed in its surface – dappling the water with a kind of white light that did not diffuse and managed to hold solidity. In that reflection, the sun winked at her, chuckled at her, playfully appearing and disappearing beneath the slow tide. “But I’ll live. That much, I’m sure of.”
The river stretched on for an eternity – it a slow, wallowing walk of a stream, yet spanned from one end of the universe to the other. It meandered at the pace of a sloth, yes, but it was certainly moving. It lazily deserted the horizon upon which the sun was slowly setting – the sun that was descending so incredibly gradually that it almost didn’t feel real to the woman – tracing its way towards the moon’s side of the world.
​
42. Solitude
I’m gonna die alone, I thought with a smile on my face. The waves crashed up against the rocks that scattered the beach, simmering into sea foam before slinking back with the tide. Over and over again the waves repeated that same motion, and if I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine that rustling sound as a rhythmic harmony – something composed by Beethoven or Mozart. It was calming to the ears, and coupled with the dry, cool air, it washed away the sweat that had clung to me after the hard day’s work. My suit lay, draped over a rock, to my right. I had loosened my tie. I had unbuttoned that very top button that held together the collar of my shirt. And the feeling of the long day of work was melting away under the influence of the cool, beach breeze, flooding my insides with the kind of feeling that I’d imagine one would feel when blasted with a hairdryer. A nice, small, warm feeling that found their way into every inch of my being.
The sun had almost set on the horizon, and as a result, there was nobody around. I could walk the streets and not come into contact with a person even if I actively sought them out. And however strange it may sound, I took comfort in that. It’s not that I dislike people. I just prefer the quiet, a lot of the time. I like to reserve time, after a long, satisfying day of work, to take a seat on a rock and stare at the sunset for hours – with no company other than my thoughts.
I ran a hand through my hair, still wet with sweat, pushing it back. The wind chuckled at this, and continued to interfere; probing at my hair, whistling past my ears, making all attempts to keep it straight rather redundant. And through it all, the ocean continued its symphony, pressing up against the rocks before receding, over and over again.
I wondered if this was right. Perhaps, if I were to spend these twilight hours with someone else, I could enjoy it even more. Maybe that is the case. Hell, I could very much see it being the case. Laughter with a good friend, or perhaps someone that meant a little bit more to me, on a beautiful, almost cloudless night like this; I’m sure it’d be fun I wouldn’t forget as easily as I’d forget this experience, sitting here, watching the sun and listening to the ocean, all by myself. Yet, I felt no urge to interrupt this moment. When I arrived here after an arduous, sweaty day in the office, I wanted nothing aside from peace and quiet. So I didn’t call a friend. I allowed myself the space to enjoy the silence, enjoy the stasis, enjoy time as it rolled away from me slowly. And all the while, with all of these questions and thoughts and inside-jokes fluttering around like butterflies in my mind, I smiled all the same. A full, gleeful smile, one spurred on by the contentedness of solitude. If I could, I would sit here until time ran out, or until the sun died, or until the oceans dried up. I could very much live all alone, all by myself, with nobody to speak to. I would be fine with that.
And so, with a fresh gust of joy, and a small, internal chuckle, I thought I’m gonna die alone, and went on smiling like that until the sun finally dropped below the horizon.
​
43. Strength
The whips were like fire – slamming into me with a bestial fervour, so that my skin would never forget it. Over and over again, in that almost monotonous sway back and forth, the Punisher whipped me at regular intervals, over and over again, waiting the same amount of time between blows, down to the instant, down to the fraction of an instant. The spaces between the re-eruption of the pounding pain was almost as painful as the impacts of the whip themselves; even the anticipation itself was torture.
I was cowering, protecting my front with my back, permitting the Punisher to splay the muscles of my back as opposed to the feebler ones on my torso. I scrunched my eyes closed, closing them as hard as was possible. The world around me was bright, bleeding through my eyelids despite my attempts to block all light out. The pain was immense, sharp – but was slowly descending into a deep throbbing as time went on.
Here, strapped to this splintered, wooden pole, I was being incarcerated for my words. The punishment for speaking up against the Group was immense. Even a word, even a breath out of tune would cause this. Any reasonable man of my standing in this world would think better than to criticise them. I think I probably should’ve followed that code, too.
I could feel the blood trickling down my back, inviting small pangs of meek itchiness between the explosions of pain. Similarly, tears leaked from my eyes and trickled down my face – miserable, unmanly tears, ones that I couldn’t wipe away with my hands tied around the pole. I felt a great desire for supplication in that moment – a great desire to fall at the feet of the Group, to lick their boots, to apologise for existing – but maybe for more reason that to merely escape this cruel punishment. But rather, I felt, in that moment, that the Group was a kind of infallible source of authority, one that, by its nature, spurred me on to give up all agency and identity in an attempt to crawl and wriggle at its feet. I felt that that was an ideal sort of existence – that being a dirty bug beneath their distinguished boot, no matter how crude or self-deprecating it may be, was the preferable existence for me.
But, as soon as that suffocating, leech-like feeling had began to increase its clutches around my heart, a memory cut through my mind like a knife through bread.
My daughter.
I remembered her toothless smile. The doll she played with, the one with the missing eye and the smashed-up leg. I remembered her twirling around in a dress, a flowery dress with small little inscriptions of native sayings on them. Most of them escaped me in that pain-stricken, miserable moment – but one remained.
“Live strong.”
My tears that had originally been tears of pain, slowly morphed into ones of melancholy. And with that, a melancholy feeling erupted in my gut, battling with that desire to supplicate myself in a toss up between the good and the evil within me. A battle between the strength and the weakness within me.
I bit my lip, creasing my brow further than it had ever been creased before.
“Only ten more, y’a hear?” The Punisher said, glee leaking from his voice. And as he said this, I opened my eyes, and turned around to face him head on.
And my world was flooded by light.
The town around me was dishevelled and still – still besides from the gentle breeze that swept across the sand of the pavements. The Punisher, stood five paces away from me, was fully clad in the clothing of the Group; sporting a crimson-and-white bandanna, a strict leather overcoat and loose, stringy trousers. I looked him in his eye, and I could feel my feeble resolve wail, wobble and wane. But after a split-second of caving to that desire to be supplicated, after a split-second of weakness – I held my gaze strong, not flinching even when the Punisher increased theirs.
“Feisty bastard, ey? That’s ten more for your ass.” The glee in his voice only grew, and the whip came hurtling towards me once again. But this time, as the whip tore me abreast, I felt a small pang of contentedness erupt with the pounding pain.
I remembered my daughter. I remembered her doll, I remembered her dress. And as the whippings kept on coming, my smile didn’t die. My smile remained, steadfast, reimbursed with strength.
And I would continue to smile until the whips bled me dry.
​
44. Forgiveness
It was like all of humanity was crowded around that spire of light. Yes, that light on the distant, distant skyline – a million-billion people clung to its base, enjoying its light, ravening it up like beasts unaware of their pig-like disposition. Yet, here I lay, on a far-away mountain, in the middle of the night, with a broken leg and a broken soul.
I looked down at that mangled leg. The femur had splintered, and splayed the flesh of my thigh; making way for a gruesome trickle of blood to gush out in a pulsating rhythm. Yes, the world was growing dark – not because of the lack of the sun – but due to the sheer amount of blood that was leaving me. And all I could do in that painful moment was gaze towards the light on the horizon, lost in its beauty, yearning for its presence.
It was a godly object amidst the mortal earth it had planted itself upon; a ginormous cross larger than the largest mountain. It broke through the clouds and the atmosphere like a spear through flesh, and the light it gave off was absolving, warm, healing. Not in the way that would fix my leg perhaps, but from the light that did manage to warm my face, I could’ve sworn I felt elation. Like a small, joyful feeling prickled on my face where the light landed. Yet it was so distant, so small and meek – that I could not reduce myself to the level of pleasure and entitlement that the rest of humanity enjoyed, crowded around the base of the great, cross-like spire. Without the comfort of the all-forgiving light, I was a pitiful, meek little thing, one that squirmed along the coarse stone and rock of the plateau that separated us – something that was barred from being on the same level of humanity as those blessed with forgiveness.
I could do nothing. I could not move. And the life – or rather, the joy of life – was leaving me through the leaky faucet that was my leg. And as time went on, as the distant party celebrating life, humanity and the bountiful joys of the universe proceeded without me, the rabid pain in my leg only increased, and I felt more and more empty, more and more cursed.
A tear brimmed in my eye. The last of my strength trickled into my fist as it clenched itself out of frustration. Why didn’t I get to enjoy that existential bliss as well? Why, because I stumbled down a mountain-ledge and split open my femur? How is that fair? Why shouldn’t life be fair? My vision was fading, and I could fully feel my consciousness trickling down my body and leaving via the gaping wound in my leg. The pain was swallowing me, draining me, filtering me, rinsing me—
I opened my eyes, only to find myself in the darkness of my bedroom. I could see no light. I could feel no overwhelming pain in my leg. Yet, as if a dagger had pierced my flesh and sunk deep into my body, I could feel a new feeling emerge within the deepest crevices of my heart. A soft, warm feeling of elation – that same feeling that I had felt ever so distantly in… what must have been my dream.
I picked myself up and pushed the bed-cover off of myself. And as I closed my eyes once again, allowing myself a moment’s respite before I started my day – I let that warm feeling simmer and settle within my chest, as if to capture the amorphous feeling of forgiveness within me, so it could never be stolen from me again.
​
45. Rebellion
The night was dark, but the fires of the rebellion cut harshly against the blackness. We waved flares into the unrelenting dusk, screaming wildly and tearing across the battlefield in a mighty stampede. The oxygen filled our collective lungs, bringing with it a cold freedom; a kind of ecstatic freedom only felt when sprinting through darkness. It filled our bones and filled our hearts as we tore towards the skyline.
Yes, we were a rebellion; a stampeding force of a thousand, fighting to protest the law of the land we were born into. The laws that held our true freedoms hostage on the skyline.
Oh, how long we longed for freedom – freedom from captivity, freedom from constrictions, freedom from roles, freedom from even freedom itself. That was true for all of us. We would no longer grin at and stomach the tyrants that had besieged our rights. They had besieged our right to exist in the way we pleased, they had stolen away all liberty, stolen away our existential, god-given rights; and for that, they would face the might of God too – on the battleground that was the skyline.
Such gleeful thoughts tickled our minds, reimbursing our strength and bolstering our speed. It fed us, like the food that they deprived us of should have; yes, the deprivation itself had brought on a new wave of energy – energy with a new, spectacular taste. Yes, the fire that burned within our hearts nourished us after so much time spent in starvation – the fire sparked to life by the prospect of a rebellion on the thin, watery-black skyline.
Growing closer to us now was a mass of grey spread along the skyline; a troop of enemy soldiers that obscured the paint-like light spread by the sun upon the dusk horizon. They wore grimaces, held themselves high, and puffed out their meaty chests. Their uniforms were of a deep shade of khaki, tight and leathery over their bulging, steel-like chests. They were like scowling statues, and their stony gaze caused the fire within our hearts to waver, ever so briefly. Yet, the light that managed to wriggle in between the walls of bodies made its way into our eyes, stoking the fire to new heights. Yes, that view of the skyline – even when the pathway to us was blocked by those who stand tall to oppose us – it only added fuel to the fire of freedom, the fire of desire, the fire of rebellion that mimicked the vivacious sun peeking above the skyline.
We would not stand down. We would not give in. Not if our lives were certain to end right where we stood – we didn’t care any longer. We grew to become something beyond just ourselves; we were all members of one body, fighting and giving our lives for the same cause, and the idea of giving one’s own life for the cause stoked the flame to unimaginable proportions – for some of us, stoking it more than the idea of reaching the freedom that lay on the skyline.
Eventually, after a long stretch of ecstatic, joyful sprinting, we slammed into the inanimate wall of soldiers; like bullets raining down on a building. We punched and slammed and slapped and pushed and shoved and raged – weaselling our way in between their legs, through small gaps in their ranks, and out towards freedom. But on our way, many stood stuck behind those towering bulwarks, unable to escape. In the wall’s shadow, many of us – many of our fires – grew weak and timid. But for those that did make it through, we escaped in time to witness the great fire of the sun rise above the skyline, illuminating the great, expansive plateau that lay behind the wall of soldiers.
Many of our fires wavered and dimmed as we felt our brothers be swallowed up by the shadow of the wall of soldiers. Many of us weeped in the days following, many songs were sung of their valiance and honour – but despite that, the fact of the matter was clear: freedom was ours, and so was the glorious, fiery skyline.
The rebellion was successful, and our fires would burn forever more; burning as one, to never be stifled and derived of freedom ever again.
​
46. Regression
And when I looked down upon my blunder, I grimaced – and the calls of shame rose within me yet again. With each relapse, the black shadow that enveloped me grew more and more pronounced. It swirled around like water vapour in the crevices that were my eyes, frantically clinging to my skin like starving, wriggling leeches. It bit into me, ground itself into me, more viciously now than ever before.
I was stood before a mirror. From my perspective, the shadow was invisible; my vision was not obscured. If anything, it was crystal clear. But my reflection showed something horrifically different. The person I saw looked like something that was less than human. Beneath the swirling wreaths of black fog, their skin was chipped and scarred. The parts of their eyes that peeked through the veil of shadow were bloodshot, wide, and appeared to have been stripped of their eyelids. The person I saw looked thin, weak and pale – and their dogged, panting breath was as incessant as flies in my ears.
I hated that sight. I hated how their skin peeled off of their body, how gleeful and animalistic they looked after indulging themselves in that deep, black desire. Yes, the deep black desire – the inability to refuse the call of the shadow, despite it heralding the call of shame.
The mirror was splintered in several places; cracks running down it like blood running down the flesh beneath a wound. Enveloped by the bleak darkness of the room, forced to project me and the clammy darkness that enshrouded my body – it was a sorry thing. The mirror, the echo chamber to that ever so loud call of shame. And time and time again, the mirror would project that image over and over, the only difference each time being how much the shadow grew.
Was I doomed to repeat this cycle? Is it in my nature to be unable to resist desire? Or is it a weakness of the mind – or perhaps the lack of agency required to put a stop to it? As time progressed, as I relapse time and time again, as the bitter cycle continues over and over, I lean further and further towards the latter. And with each one of those bitter thoughts, more of my skin flakes away like dust in the wind. More and more, over and over, time and time again, I cave in to my flesh, and am dragged deeper and deeper into the darkness – the shadow – that should have stayed beneath my skin.
Even whilst I’m staring upon that dastardly, horrific reflection, I know that I will cave to desire again. Because my body is both occupied by a virtuous, introspective soul, and something incredibly and viciously inhuman. And those two natures were interweaving, interlocking, merging – collapsing into one another upon my face. And the shadow was that inner darkness leaking out.
And I could no longer contain it.
The shadow grew – still wriggling, still leech-like – growing to fill the entire room. The world became truly and utterly black. And now that the mirror was clouded over, desire roared within me like a lion, overpowering my human heartbeat, shouting over the top of my human shame.
And so, I did it again.
And when I looked down upon my blunder, I grimaced – and the calls of shame rose within me yet again.
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47. Life
The world around the human stretched out to infinity, abysmally dark in one direction and viscerally bright in the other. The two mirrors reflected each other over and over and over, spiralling until numbers couldn’t articulate how far it had spun. The human trapped between those two mirrors could not avoid the infinite weight that this vision held. They were trapped in a box and forced to look upon infinity – the infinity of darkness and the infinity of light.
In the dark direction, as the reflections appeared to grow further and further from the original, the world slowly became more and more warped, and the shadows of darkness crawled further and further across the mirrors. If the person in the mirror-box gazed deep enough into it, they could have sworn the contortions curled into deformed, grinning faces – if they looked at it from the right angle.
In the light direction, as the reflections appeared to grow further and further from the original, the glorious light grew more and more vibrant. There seemed to be an infinite array of colours hidden within that amorphous mass of golden light; like small rainbows that became ever-more abundant as the distance increased. The person in the mirror-box yearned for this. They yearned to break away from the darkness and the middle-ground between heaven and hell – but the mirror-box would most certainly not allow it. The person was forced to dabble in both the retched darkness and the light that was just ever so slightly out of reach.
They had been in this mirror-box for their entire life, forced to look upon their own face perpetually, contextualised either by the background of light or the background of darkness. And, some days, they desired to be free from the mirror-box entirely, even more than they desired to venture into the great expansive embrace of the light.
However, that feeling never lasted.
They would, for weeks or months on end, press themselves up against the glass that barred them from the light, gazing into it longingly. And whilst they knew, somewhere in the crevices of their heart, that they would never reach past the glass – they could exist like that, still content. And the longer they peered into the light, the more the light grew, and the further that the darkness that lay in the opposing direction receded. The longer they peered into the light, the more colours were nurtured within the glorious golden mass, and the more their soul opened up to it.
“Say,” they would mutter every now and then, “Will I ever truly reach you?” A tear or two would sometimes fall from their eye. “I want to be light. I’m terribly afraid of the darkness, you see. It’s so… horrifying.” Their voice would crack and split at its seams. “You’re so incredibly beautiful. You hold so much joy within you, so much love and hope. So tell me… how can I escape the clutches of the darkness? How can I become one with you?”
No matter how many times they muttered such things, the glass didn’t get any closer to shattering, nor did they get any closer to the ever-growing light. But despite being unable to fully feel the infinity of that light – they could see it, they could love it, and they could feel it warm their skin with its great, kind embrace.
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48. Death
“I don’t get you.” The little girl said, gazing blankly up at Death. “I can’t vanish. I’m here. I exist. Whadd’ya mean it will end?” She was small; incredibly small, still puffy around the cheeks and still had dribble coursing down her chin. Death towered over her, arched over her, its skeletal body – draped by that rugged, dusty black gown – contorted, twisted and cracked as its bones popped and shifted over one another. Death grinned at her, silent, as if waiting for something with a bated breath.
The world around them was as white as could be, for as far as the eye could see; an empty universe that the girl felt was truly and utterly endless. But, for Death, the world looked a whole lot different. It was a small, enclosed garden – barred by fences. Where the girl was standing, near one of the fences that marked the beginning of the garden – the flowers at her ankles blossomed like stars. But the further away from that end of the garden the flowers and grass grew, the more it wilted into sorry imitations of what it used to be. It was an almost cruel sight; one synonymous with the degradation of Death’s rusting bones, draping gown, and accursed smile.
“I ain’t gonna die.” The little girl said. Where a child of her stature might have burst out into tears at the notion of having something stolen away from her – she did no such thing. And every time Death faced human beings, they never did seem to act in that way that Death thought they should have. The girl gazed up at Death, blankly, unafraid. “Other people die. But I’m not gonna.” She said it as if it were obvious. “I’ve always existed. And I always will.” She said it as if it were the deepest line of truth engraved into her soul. Because, in that metaphorical sense, it was.
But Death is prideful. Death is haughty. Death is quick. And whilst it is the common consensus that people change once they come face to face with death – that’s not the case. It’s when they feel its touch.
Death grabbed the girl by the shoulders, slamming the child to the floor with a vehement, vicious push. Death continued to leer over her, the swirling mass of shadows that pooled in its eye-sockets wriggling and waving like the tossing of waves in a furious storm.
“Feel me.” It said. “Know me.” It hissed. “Fear me.” It blathered. And sure enough, horror visibly curdled in her eyes and in her face, and she was set off wailing and crying like any child should in the face of Death. Yet, even so, Death knew that as she tossed and writhed and wailed beneath it – to her, the world was still infinite, the world was still basked in that overwhelming, heavenly light. She couldn’t see the flowers at her feet, and she couldn’t see their propensity to wilt.
Death wailed, not moving its head but instead opening its mouth wide to blare its horrific, scratchy, scrapy scream right into the child’s face as she wriggled upon the ground. She cried, matching it – and together they flooded the world with a metallic cacophony of pain and suffering.
But no matter how much Death reiterated it, no matter how harsh its grin, no matter how harsh its wail, the child would never appreciate its impermanent existence. Never fully. Death knew that as life progressed and she grew, she would still never be able to see the garden. She would only see her own skin wilting, look upon it in confusion, and remain blinded the blissful light of the universe she existed in, the only existence she knew.
And so, with a hoarse throat, Death continued to wail at the girl’s face uselessly, desperately forcing the truth down her throat – the truth she would never understand, not even when it would be too late.
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49. Rebirth
I was surrounded by an all-encompassing shadow – I could not see, hear, nor breathe. It was clammy, claustrophobic, and it didn’t give me a moment’s solace in the waking hours, nor when I slept. I constantly struggled for light, any at all; I desperately clawed for something beyond the darkness, so that I could see the world I had been thrust into. But no, I was forcibly suspended in the indiscernible darkness, and it would not let me go no matter how much I wriggled or protested its grip.
I wanted, and had been wanting, to be relieved of this monotonous, useless existence for as long as memory served me. My eyes yearned for something to fill them like crying kittens wail for food – and tears did poke at the inside of my face incessantly in response to that helpless, wimpish feeling. And such a feeling arose because the world around me was purely and utterly useless. Nothing changed, nothing shifted nor moved around, and nothing ripped apart the silence to give me a life worth living.
For all my life within that cage, it had remained exactly, horrifically, the same – and there had been no catalyst to change this.
But one day or night, something did end up changing. Something ever so small, yet existentially large. From the point in my cage that lay directly above me, a pin-prick of light slowly grew like a fruit ripening on a branch. And – so incredibly small as it was – it soon detached from that point on the ceiling. It ever so slowly descended towards me, falling at the pace of a feather. And as it fell, it glimmered spectacularly; it was the purest, fullest white I could ever imagine, and within that pure light therein lay hints of other colours, reds, pinks, oranges, flashing in and out of existence as the small orb grew closer and closer.
I reached out for it, too weary and numb to think too much of it in the moment. I did so by loosely dragging my arm upwards into the air, and extending my forefinger like I was inviting a butterfly to perch upon it. And, like a butterfly, the orb of light did just that.
And when it came into contact with my finger, the world exploded into a cacophony of light.
My eyes were brutally assaulted by what felt like an entire universe of light – burning my retina and attacking my pale skin. It was painful, shocking, and the world had grown from that small, black enclosure to something infinitely larger, infinitely more difficult to comprehend. Yet, as the seconds passed by me and fell away like sand between fingertips, my eyes adjusted, and I finally witnessed what was beyond the clammy darkness.
A pale sphere of light hung in the night’s sky, ever so far away. Upon its surface were small splotches of grey – immeasurably far-away seas upon an alien planet. It was beautiful. It was brilliant. And the light it cast on my face thawed me out of my cocoon of cold, solemn darkness, enlightening me to the full scope of the universe I had not been privy to.
I lay upon a petal; a white-pink surface, surrounded on all sides by petals of a similar composition. They all spread outwards from the centre of the massive flower; blooming, prospering, reaching into the night. I had been trapped by an unbud lotus flower – but now it was free, now I was free, and the scope of the world was fully opened up to my light-starved eyes.
And within that rebirth, within the embrace of the budding lotus flower – the frown of discontent that had racked me for the entirety of this life – melted off my face.
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50. Morality
I run my hands through the sands of creation, lifting it, inspecting it, letting it fall.
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A million universes fall between my fingers, skimming over one another, mixing together, weaving to form a drop in the infinite desert that extended infinitely ahead of me and infinitely behind me.
I look up, once more, at the milk-like, cerulean spread splattered across the firmament – full of gleaming, far-away stars, each harbouring their own planets, their own deserts, their own dunes of sand. I stood there for a while; the sand freezing in the air as time halted. I took that moment to ponder the scope of creation. To each of those planets, I had ventured – carving out their pathways through time. And, within that massive, cerulean galaxy, each planet – from the perspective of an outsider looking at the great tapestry in its full scope – it was similar to these individual grains of sand within this infinite desert; they all make up the great, spectral tapestry of the universe, each freeze when I stop moving, each retrace their steps when I do, and each resume in their perfect, preordained motion when I scrape through the frozen air to lumber into the future.
The sand fell, and the strange white fog curls around me as I push through the frozen, timeless air. I push on through that small resistance, dragging my limbs forward, barely clinging to consciousness.
My great tapestry… I wonder if there is any real point to it all. All these universes, all these grains of sand – the universe that I myself exist within – they don’t contribute to any greater tapestry, do they? Well, it might. But even as I pondered that, wandering the infinite plains of time upon this expansive, endless world, I felt no pang of worry, disillusionment nor reluctance in my heart. Instead, I still feel the need to continue to carve out the artwork that were these sand dunes, and feel it so strongly that it shakes me to my very bones. It is intrinsic to my being, it seems, to care for each individual grain of sand, to care about my artwork, to perpetually tinker it until everything was set into such perfect motion that by the time creation wilts away, it will have reached the end I desire for it.
Perhaps, at heart, I am a storyteller; and the universe is my canvas.
I stop for a moment, as that thought crosses my mind. I reach down to the desert at my bare feet, and lift up a singular granule of sand from amidst its neighbours. I peer into it, and see a person stuck within the tight grip of an unbud lotus flower. I shift the granule in between my thumb and forefinger, and in turn shift around the universe within it. I send down, to the person stuck within the flower’s cold, damp embrace, a way for them to escape their useless life – and grant them rebirth. And after I am done, I place the granule back into the midst of the other sands it had previously been neighbouring, and watch as my will overwrites the basal intricacies of my tapestry as a whole.
And then, I lift myself from my crouch, and plough onwards once more.
As I move, the sands wriggle and shift ahead of me and behind me, the troughs and peaks of the wave-like sands shifting, equalising and alternating; the troughs becoming peaks, and the peaks becoming troughs. And within all of it, my slight alteration to that singular grain of sand becomes more and more pronounced as time runs on into infinity.
Perhaps, at heart, I am a teacher; and the universe is my blackboard.
If each granule held within it a message, a core tenant of how other granules should exist – then its message would spread like wildfire to every other granule surrounding it, even if its change was great or only little. And, now more than ever before, I care so deeply about each, individual granule that despite my weariness and exhaustion, I will tinker and edit my tapestry until infinity lapses – because that caring, motherly feeling was ingrained so deep within me that it overpowered everything else.
It is my nature to care. It is my nature to nurture. And it is my nature to teach the granules how to live, how to love, how to laugh – and that is how it will always be. My love is as deep as the desert is long, and my tapestry is as large as time is endless.
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And so, for what will not be the last time, I run my hands through the sands of creation, lifting it, inspecting it, letting it fall.