Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.

  My soul pulsed to the sangreline engine of that demon ship, as I was temporarily supervised by the ghosts of my bygone days.

  I can still remember the autumn chill of that horrible day; the tops of the withering trees brayed in the wind, while cold and silent rain dripped from God’s premonitory sobbing. The blood that drooled upon me was soiled ketchup, glacially rolling down my face and onto the beige kitchen tiles below. The blood that flowed within was tainted by a sacrilegious plague, with every pulse commanding a chime of the bell of tongues, clicking in reverb through the annihilation of youthful ignorance. And the blood that stained my feet was Bifr?st, shimmering every shade of shame when I envision that paternal Eucharist.

  I can still remember that accursed taste of betrayal and blasphemy: a black Dyson sphere swallowing the holy glow of the sun. The scent and taste of it upon my eyes, nose, lips, and throat burnt the Tree of Knowledge, as the Garden once more became impure through a radioactive bonfire. The Gestalt humanity was left as the true victim of the Devil's game. Eve and Adam, yes, but their descendants? Look at how they weren't even playing the game and still lost. I could do nothing, bound to that supine chair. My hands and legs, chained as if they were severed from my small form, while my head was forced to gaze into Venus' curtained canyon mere inches above my eyes, while it was being besieged...

  By that speckled... God forsaken... Giant!

  "I will kill you... I will kill you... I will kill you... Speckled giant..." Whispers that didn’t cease, even after Mossberg’s crescendo and Gerbur’s gutting.

  Zero sum. He slew you, and you murdered him. And yet the damage to me was only multiplied... It's so unfair... Why us? Why did you shatter us?

  I can still remember how shameful it all made me. Dad, you were still PURE. You were still clean... Mom was... Defiled... I was drenched in Eitr, and by osmosis, it infected my heart and mind, like the abyssal asp's aqua regia that infected the snail. I became a lustful coward, so afraid of pain, yet the fear was engorged by what I kept up my streak for. 6,551 days of SHAME upon my own being! There I was, a colt frolicking on bloody straw, one far too timid to pass through the open gate that I thought was just another glass wall. That is what you saved, Dad. In exchange for you, an ungrateful bastard was allowed to continue the game. But I, in my broken state, could only choose to stagnate upon the "game-over" screen, while warbled strings of violins mocked my failures.

  The memory of you punctured thorns into my hippocampus and heart, all transfiguring me as a reflection of Oedipus. And everyone else but your parents repeatedly continued to reenact the Ides of March upon me with such daggers. A guardian sigil was your only lasting presence. It was the last thing you gave me...

  My eyes, every 6,551 times I rested as an embalmed cadaver, often transfixed themselves on the popcorn above me. Their salt was pure poison, rendered into decay by the projections my eyes glued to their white plaster. Those nights that followed were not for God's warm peace, but Satan's frozen despair. It didn't matter where I fixed my gaze. I looked up, and the projector revealed my pain. I gazed down, and the capillaries in my vision mimicked the blood pools. I glared forward, and the mocking dissenters declared me a violator. I couldn't look anywhere without those alarms erupting from my memories, rendering the clock beside me obsolete in its red glow. I closed my eyes, and the memories continued dissolving the cotton candy jungle of childhood joy. I was infected with the Hingeman's desolation.

  Darkness faded as I descended further into the maw of Apophis.

  I awoke from Morpheus’ sock puppeteering. The chittering rumble of a gurney resonated from below me; in sound and movement, it quaked like a shopping cart with a revolving fourth wheel. The epidermis of that gurney's cushions was like a freshly shaved face, mostly smooth but with the roughness of stubble. My sight was obscured by a blindfold, whose wool was drenched in ichor and whose smell was that of teenage neglect. The sound of hooves rigidly clacked upon the keratin-tile floor, reverberating like heavy heels in a long hallway. Behind and around me were three sets of these hooves, moving together, by their patterns and occasional grunts their masters made. Above me was the stinging warmth of membranous urinal lights, each illuminating their fluorine humiliation through the blindfold upon me and me alone.

  The gurney slowed and turned, screeching with the sound of chitin upon bone, as I had arrived at the place that would become my tomb.

  The gurney stopped and revolved swiftly. Two gigantic, lightly furred hands clasped the skin above my sternum and left thigh, almost ripping the skin off entirely, and flung me carelessly upon a long and wide table. My nearly torn skin burned with the friction, and my back and legs were bruised lightly from my landing. I grunted softly, my throat parched from the absence of water since my transportation. A horse-like snort emanated from the left of me, indicating that I was a nuisance to him, for this was a repetition of the same daily scheme of what I came to know as “restoration”. Shortly after, the same horse strapped rectangular, follicle belts upon my legs, arms, and head. I was trapped within supine furniture… Again…

  Upon the strap on my head being fastened, the blindfold was ripped off my head, the force of which was enough to snap my head forward and back like I was in a car crash. The back of my head ricocheted off the table, causing an excruciating jolt of pain. Soon, the concussion spread the headache to my entire head, with the constricted blood flow adding to the coming nausea.

  Despite this, the passing of my imitation of Samson allowed me to finally observe the liver of this giant horse fly. I was on some kind of operating table, parallel to the open archway on the other side of the claustrophobic room. I quickly examined every last detail I could of that pristinely bloody place. It was almost entirely red, with scant splotches of green and blue; it smelled of rotten bleach and virginal excrement, as if this were my captors’ idea of sanitation. To my left and right were chestnut colored Peqans, both of which were operating meat devices akin to an engineer with electronics. The left one spliced vein-like cords that sparked with crimson electricity as he cycled the ossified outlets and coils. The right was typing upon a keyboard constructed from a cow’s left loin, asymmetrical in its orientation, with the arrangement of the several dozen fingernail keys; each stroke of the keys squished with the release of pus. Both of them also carried giant scapula cleavers, serrated sternum knives, warped vertebraec corkscrews, and welded metacarpal clamps.

  Left of the archway was a different Peqan, who was a larger and gray-colored variant with a red mane and an ornate diadem that comfortably wrapped around the top of his head; he was conversing through a telephone-like object on the wall, which appeared similar to a three-foot-long, bloodied collarbone with a small keypad constructed from yellowed, human-like molars. The crowned pantherian equine uttered a language that sounded like a horse trying to speak Spanish with the lungs of a lion and the tongue of a tuna, if adding belches and bellows.

  The Peqans themselves, arrayed in their black-leather butcher garbs, possessed the heads of horses, the talons and tails and teeth of lions, the lower body and hooves of horses, and the nipple-less, heavily muscular human upper halves.

  Suddenly, a booming, guttural utterance erupted from the right side of the hallway, and the stampeding claps of marbled hooves chattered closer and closer, louder and louder. The other Peqans noticed this disruption and swiftly shot up to face their coming confidant.

  What emerged from the other side was a massive Peqan, twelve-feet-tall, dwarfing the eight-foot-tall chestnuts and the ten-foot-tall gray. His musculature was far greater than that of his counterparts as well, appearing as if he could drag an airplane with his teeth alone. He was golden like a lion, and he flared his white mane at his compatriots. He hissed and growled through his fangs, as aureate cooking oil-like spit escaped between them like sulfuric rain. He was sharply pointing at a worn skin-tablet with brown calligraphy, which appeared like a combination of stamped hooves and the Greek alphabet, if it was drawn by a dolphin’s blowhole. The gold one shoved the document into the face of the crowned one, as if demanding his fellows to follow the tenets of a sacred law. When they did not heed his demands, the golden Peqan gave one final warning to his superior, the crown. Though a relentless catechization from the other Peqans forced him to relent, as if he knew his religious dogma had lost to political intrigue. He stormed off, his hooves clamping on the scarlet tiles below as if he were on a colossal, pitched-down xylophone. After some time, the echo from the right side faded into the warbled ambiance.

  I observed the remaining Peqans, with a partial curiosity, as they returned to their duties. The chestnut horses went to their other gore machines, where the dials and switches and buttons were replaced with tendons and ligaments and areolas, respectively, all appearing as if they were harvested from obese humanoids. The vaguely tan-colored monitor screens were stretched-out intestines made into a thin membrane, much like the skin of Medieval sausages. Even the medical noises coming from those machines were organic. The heart beat monitor was a syncopation of squishing eyeballs, the turning cogs a cacophony of grinding marrow, and the clicks and clacks of switches and dials were the snaps of released nitrogen from cracked knuckles.

  The crown analyzed a mole-skin data pad, swiping through what I presume were catalogues of other victims of their machinations. Some images and reports insulted his being like a homeless man squatting in a rich man’s vacant home, while others pleased him like the sweet scent of freshly baked loaves. Eventually, he stopped swiping and further analyzed the image on the tablet, transferring his gaze gradually between me and the tablet a few times, as if he found the perfect match to sate his needs. He called to the chestnuts and displayed the image to them. They both grinned and pointed at me with their thumbs, notifying their satisfaction with the future ritual they had in mind for me.

  The gray one approached me at a leisurely pace, as he stroked his mane with his right hand and set the wrinkled, skin-tablet vertically upon my chest with his left so that I could witness his obtuse fixation. Through that colon-membraned, warmly tinted screen was depicted a gray skin-table with dismembered ivory and crimson Peqan body parts upon it, alongside two massive, green eyes suspended in a jar filled with a violet, viscous liquid. The head, arms, torso, legs, and tail were surgically rendered into cyber-organic implants, but they appeared completely natural otherwise. The internal organs were far larger than they should have been. The stomach was a bloated mass five times larger than a typical horse, while the heart was a dense machine that radiated violet iridescence. He exuberantly pressed the tablet, which smelled loosely of sweaty musk, upon my face and grinned widely with his many fangs bared, all to express his unbound joy.

  He uttered something, then, though it still resembled garbled, Spanish radio signals coming out of a gasping pufferfish. Even with my inability to understand his language at the time, I entirely translated his demeanor into an apt phrase, though without their surgical and grotesque verbage:

  Horror consumed my mind as I recalled my past once more:

  I had a cholecystectomy when I was nine. Gallstones were causing immense pain in my back to the point of sleeplessness and thoughtlessness. My worries before the surgery were unfounded, though justified, given my youth. It was a clean procedure, for the most part. The pristine surgery room and hospital had a fittingly thorough and efficient staff. Surgeons removed the gallbladder after a couple of hours under anesthesia, and after a few days, I was able to return home with some antibiotics. However, the fortnight that followed was consumed with nightmares of the surgery if it went wrong. For some of them, I awoke during the ordeal, and I saw my still beating heart ripped out of my chest cavity with the demonic surgeon’s bare hand. In others, I was strapped to a vertical bed, with various bits of organs laid on a table next to me. The surgeons were in lab coats, wielding great machetes and rusted hacksaws and giant sewing needles. They would then cut into my flesh, butchering my limbs and other extremities off, despite my yelps of agony at the onset of it. They would then sew on the organs from the table and my formally dismembered limbs haphazardly. An arm where my leg would be, a toe where an elbow would be, and even an entirely out-of-body goat head grafted onto where my right pectoral was. I was a modern-day Frankenstein, if the makers were completely insane, macabre artisans instead of mad scientists.

  I was nine years old… And yet the details were so vividly accurate, not cartoonish in the way my comics depicted…

  The Ayahuasca was dredging up torment and now… I knew it was going to recycle it and transform them into a singular anathema of agonizing totality.

  I gave a hopeless yawp to the crowned horselion, who glared at me with vitriol. I desperately thought in hopelessness that one of them could understand so that I could leave this ventricular death machine, but the look on his face was merciless. He grasped some kind of sharpened femur club from his back and began assaulting my face with the blunt force and jagged edges. My brain felt every single concussive blast, my skin was ripped apart into splintered scars of microscopic bleeding cataracts, and my eyes were punctured completely into squished grapes. I screamed with the immense pain of it, blinded from the blood-red world seeping out of the inside. I could still hear the grunts and huffs of displeasure, despite the drowning dampening of the muffled screeching of my wavering eardrums. In time, the beatings stopped, the Peqan seemingly getting his point across, and I presumed that he continued his work. I wept with the agony I was in, the bloody tears stinging my crushed eyes. It hurt so damn much… My head was but a fucking pin cushion for needles that were larger than my head... Nausea consumed my world in constant, dizzying evanescence. From my right, one of the chestnuts heard my retching, groaning with absolute displeasure. His hooves clamped upon the floor, and he then slapped my jaw with his veiny left palm, and examined my mouth with his disgusting finger, which tasted of compost, circling it within like a dentist. After several moments, so began the first operation...

  The sewing was done with a thin finger bone the size of a toddler's, yet with the taste of graphite and the hardness of steel. Then, in swift motions, the barbarian surgeon stabbed thousands of tiny holes around my mouth and through my lips. The lower end of my face was a scarlet fondue, one that this chestnut scraped with some kind of sandpaper tongue-like sheet over and over again. Amidst the still falling cascades of blood, he took the same bloody needle and threaded steel-like hair follicles through, which tasted and smelled like they were sourced from some beggar who had last washed his hair with sewer water and bear sweat. He began the work of sewing my mouth shut with the vile thread. It was so putrid-smelling that I nearly vomited from the combined sensory overload. But as the bile went up my throat, the Peqan used his massive left hand to put a vice grip upon my neck just before my spine would have been broken. And... The agony of having that much force filling the bottom of my throat, and the vacuum of said violation inflating my stomach... The vile chestnut finished sewing my mouth shut while my mind was blank with terror. All I could do was make pathetic noises from my nostrils and my nearly ruptured esophagus. Weeping bloody tears and snorting bile-infused mucus back inside me. I could not risk them defiling me anymore... Anything but that...

  I had the entire world's regret upon me that day. My thoughts were consumed with guilt and shame upon my soul for the transgressions I had made in life, for surely I was in new circles that Dante never found. For Hell has an infinite number of protostome hellmouths by which the demons practice their undefined creativity in the sheer torture of the damned. And Beatrice would never desire any human to know just how vile demons and devils could be. I thought of the only logical conclusion of my extradition:

  Woe to me! For my lust for the profane debaucheries and my sloth for mankind has bestowed upon me a second death! This was but the first hour of the eons that would turn into my cyclic wheel of wretched, escalating torture. Not only could I not scream with my still blood-sewn mouth, but I could not see through my blood-crushed eyes. All I could do with my being was sniffle iron and sulfur, feigning the vague imitation of a crying nose.

  The xylophone claps meandered through the room as the many hours rolled on. At the same time, the organic meat-mechanisms continued to emit their artificially natural noises, albeit distorted by the wounds to my eardrums. I was fed through my nostrils every three hours or so. It smelled like a blend of raw chicken and old Swiss cheese, yet had the texture of dried broth when it glided down my bruised esophagus. It was horrible, but it was food. During that time, my thoughts turned to Fantasia for guidance…

  Oh, Lake Michigan. How I have missed your fog and rain, and the warmth of your breeze in the summer! The loons wailed from the distance, creating monsters in the fog over the lake. Sandhill cranes and piping plovers wandered the shoreline, for food and mates, amidst those peaceful tides. It was good back then. Two decades from the abomination of my restoration. I was but a child wandering the shores with my two dogs, Samson and Delilah, a brindle Pitbull and Miniature Pinscher, respectively. We sat on the shores, cuddling with each other under the gray clouds. Their fur was soft, reminding me of the pleasantry of the sleep I once enjoyed. I can't help but feel jealous of my past self, of the burdens he didn't bear. But I also feel guilty for being led astray by the nihilistic folly of the world and myself. Who was I to listen to the same old doom and gloom about these fears and that? I became Iscariot if I traded my once noble desires for a few magazines with breasts on them that I swiftly abandoned. Why did I give up so much? What had led me astray?

  If this were the cost of knowledge, who in their right mind would pursue this? For what?! I was reaching these thoughts, and the worst was still on its way. At least I knew how stupid I truly was.

  Three days of agonizing sleeplessness passed, and an alien yet familiar voice slid into the room. It was not a Peqan. It was a jawless voice that erupted in an ammonia stench, which I recognized from my time on Theia: the bastard Eggman. None of its words were ones I could understand, but they were amicable towards the other Peqans, who seemingly were far more polite to it than they were to each other. Their quiet huffs indicated their anxiety for that creature. The Eggman left after some time, and each Peqan sighed in relief, sounding of crackling ice sheets.

  After another couple of days in crimson blindness and phonetic sensitivity, my sight partially returned. My eyes were still squished to the point where I could only see red, but it was at least something, even if my irises stung like wasps hurling their piercing stingers into them. Despite the pain, I still gazed. There he was; the abominable Eggman was now sitting on a chair across the room from me. He saw my recognition of him, and his ovarian form waddled towards me. He uttered some gibberish that gurgled like magma. Even if I did understand him, I couldn't speak, nor did I make any sort of loud noise, out of fear of the larger chestnut’s sewing needles. The Eggman, grinning widely with his jack-o'-lantern smile and squinting his triangular eyes, glided his eggshell hand down slowly from my jaw to the top of my left thigh. It was as if he were attempting to comfort me in his perversions. I remained silent. The Eggman was irked by this and began yelling at the chestnut to my right. The Peqan gave him a half-hearted apology, which further enraged the Eggman.

  He stormed to the now cowering centaur, and despite being half the size of him, the Eggman rose to his height and gave swift chopping motions towards his elongated face, slapping the side of his right hand into his left. It was like a cruel teacher scolding a child. The chestnut uttered a single unintelligible utterance, as the other Peqans dwindled into ponies on the other side of the room.

  The Eggman sighed enormously at this, his uvula rumbling through his throat like a wooden chime in a windstorm. He backed away temporarily, and meandered his crackled eyes, finding the item of his search: the femur club that still had my blood and sinew dripping from it. The Eggman grasped it from the floor, as the Peqan recognized his stance. He collapsed to the floor in abject terror, as the reverberation of his muscular underbelly resonated from beneath him. The Eggman rushed towards him and began beating the chestnut senselessly. Lavender, viscous blood sputtered out of the centaur like a geyser and splattered the two other horselions in the room. His roars of pain and pleas for mercy were ignored by the Eggman as he continued to butcher his quarry for three minutes. Eventually, the Peqan stopped making noise, and his purple-flooded remains revealed that he had long been dead. The Eggman… His body split open, and he began to violently swirl his crimson yolk tongue to slurp the horselion as if he were a pulpy soup. The smell was diabolical, akin to a rotten horse carcass, defecated eggs, and pig vomit. All that was left was the heart. The heart…

  He took that soccer ball-sized heart, hovered towards me with a sly, impossibly sized grin, and ripped out the stitches of my mouth. My lower face’s skin followed, causing my muscle and sinew and bone to be completely exposed to the burning light and stinging air. I screeched with my dry, bruised throat, compounding the pain of my warped esophagus and stomach as if they were being stomped on by elephants. My lower face contained the vessels of the violent, and each stabbing sensation was the souls leaving their last remark upon me, their unknowing captor. Despite the Niagara Blood Falls, the Eggman did not stop his abuse there. He whispered into my ear, the first words I could understand from these monsters, one whose corrupted and deepset tone bubbled with the crimson yolk:

  “Mehhh dahhh Spirit-ahhhh c’nt’n-yoo tahh… .” A mockery of human speech. For a moment, I was more insulted than terrified. And yet that fear returned swifter than a gale.

  Shortly after he ripped off my lower face, he violently shoved the heart down my throat. I couldn’t make a sound despite the complete and utter misery and suffocation, for my voice box was broken instantly. The agony was nothing else I had ever experienced. The heart had a wretched taste, akin to horse manure and motor oil, the texture like that of rubber and peanut butter, and its size and hardness were like that of a soccer ball made of stone. My jaw dislocated with a rupturing snap, while my esophagus burst entirely with the unwanted, oversized invader. And my stomach was entirely overfilled, ballooned to a size that should have been impossible to survive. I could feel my own hot blood swelling out of my burst-open throat, all of which leaked onto the muscles of my back and lungs… I could not breathe through the sanguine inundation within me. Suffocation. Agony. Drowning.

  I was ruined… I was ruined… I was ruined… I was ruined... I was ruined... I was ruined...

  In my half-conscious state, I witnessed the Eggman nod his torso, as if appreciating the fact that I lived. I honestly half-expected him to give me a participation trophy, the fucker. I remained in the supine position, statue-like, with the trauma shoved into me, my stomach still bulging from the cast-iron heart, as I was still slowly being overwhelmed by the blood. The Eggman threw his index finger downward and mouthed some more words. Sound had completely left me, as my eardrums were ruptured into oblivion. He walked to the crown and the remaining chestnut, ordering them to "restore" me, I presumed. In my numbed state, I distracted myself with the interpretation of what my future was. I dreaded to think of how many years I would spend in this tortured state of being a meat puppet, a Freudian Pinocchio, Job if the Devil were God, a Stygian pi?ata. It all flashed through me.

  The two Peqans approached my transfiguration table with machetes and hacksaws and needles. Of course, it was going to be like this, damn it… Another horselion, this one five feet tall and mahogany, pushed a crimson-draped cart into the room. The crown pulled the drape off, revealing… The parts of that ivory Peqan... I couldn't yelp, but by God, the torment I knew was coming… The surgery was beginning.

  I was five years old. I had scraped my knee on the pavement after falling off my scooter while playing with Samson. I was crying up a tempest of tears due to the oozing wound. Mommy rushed to me to check on it and told Daddy to find some cream and a bandage to cover it. Samson was whimpering in worry, while Mommy was telling me everything would be okay. Everything would be okay.

  Everything would be okay...

  And I was then. Mommy wiped away the blood, applied the cream and the bandage that Daddy gave her, and carried me inside. Samson followed behind, while Daddy got the scooter and dropped it by the garage. I read comic books in my dinosaur-decorated bed the rest of the day. As my knee healed over the next few days, I imagined myself as a helpful sidekick to these superheroes to rid the world of evil and torment. All to create a better world for everybody else!

  It's honestly laughable how naive I was, but that's natural. We are so ignorant of the world's nuance, about how pain and cruelty give meaning to beauty and happiness. Without the other side, we wouldn't exist as we do. We often cry about injustice, claiming that the world would be a better place without sorrow and pain and evil. Who are we to determine that? What point does complaining serve in a world that has suffering and wickedness in it, regardless?

  As children, we laugh and cry due to our ignorance. As adults, we laugh and cry due to our experiences. For one exists to ensure the other.

  My knee eventually got better, and I was able to go back outside with Samson to play again. Imagining myself as a hero within the comics. Saving the world from bad guys, all to make the world a better place. That's what I wanted... A better world...

  God... What the Hell happened to me? I continue to remember how much I dishonored them all. Mom. Dad. Samson. Delilah. Myself.

  Once, I imagined myself flying through the spheres of God's domain of the stars, but here I was...

  Buried within the depths of a space-bound horsefly, about to be transfigured into the grotesque beast on the other side of that Amigaran monolith.

  Just another monster on the Legion assembly line.

  CHOP.

  The cleavers chipped away at my legs, slowly severing them in wandering succession at the ankles, knees, and hip, as if purposely causing me as much suffering as possible. My blood spurted forth from the wounds, jetting up to the ceiling and creating a crescendo of crimson that echoed through the room like an orchestra from Hell. I was silently wailing with my broken trachea. The Peqans smiled wryly underneath their surgeons' masks as they continued the butchering. My right leg was liberated from my body and thrown to the other side of the room. From the corner of my eye, I saw this bison-sized jackal creature with a mouth extending across what would be its spine sprint to my severed leg. It knelt to smell it, as if it were cooked steak. And then, it leapt onto it, its back on top of it, and in mere moments, my leg was in the belly of that beast. I could scarcely dread the loss before the agony of my other leg returned. The same gorehound waited patiently like a disciplined dog. Once my left leg was separated with a final jagged cut, the gray horselion tossed said leg directly into the maw of the hound, and laughed aloud, saying what I imagine is their equivalent of “good boy”. Meanwhile, the chestnut began to hack at my arms, aiming at the wrists, elbow, and shoulder one at a time, all to induce efficient and ritualistic suffering as if I were being forced into complete, body horror asceticism. The amount of pain I was under began to make me slip in and out of consciousness, as if I was growing completely numb to it. Hell had conquered me, and I was becoming just another demon in its infernal, wretched cosmology. I was finally broken. I fell into a complete stupor, a slumber where my eyes were open, but my spirit was elsewhere… The last thing I saw before I was transported was the two Peqans beginning to cut open my chest...

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  ...

  November 12th, 1981.

  Damn it. Once more, I ride this skeletal carousel… How shall my tragedies be fashioned into a fable this time?

  I will spare you the direct details, Dear Reader. I do not wish to replicate the depravity written by King and Nabokov. Shock value draws in the eyes, but relinquishes the heart. Let them have their fanatics to justify the abuses they imagine.

  Only condemnation should follow such depictions.

  This specific recollection was another series of oscillating visions, forged into a united, mythic rendition. A “beautified” syncopation of the truth.

  And yet, even when dressed as legend, not even an equivalency to Avalon would grant me reprieve from the nightmares that I still saw. Every. Single. Fucking. Night.

  No matter how much makeup you put on your face, you are only hiding the truth you already know…

  Undo the stitches above my heart, and let my torment bleed again…

  Cold rain upon the window, beads flowing down like molasses. Chicken Alfredo pasta; its scent evokes an image of delight. Dad and the dogs within a truck, a biannual checkup for my brother and sister. Green, black, blue, white, and yellow. Pulsars drawn within those comic pages underneath that Cretaceous blanket, illuminated by the warm glow of the lamp.

  Broken glass, its sound a reverbation of the creation of Chicxulub. A shattered window upon the face of my fortress. A malevolent foe bursting forth, a rotund yet spindly figure, disfigured heavily by the abuse wrought upon him. A monster who was once a man, and now was a puppet forged through the Hingeman’s own defilements.

  Suffocated blue lotuses. Deranged pungent yellow mistletoes. Jaundice-colored eggs of the parasite. The pungent conquered the blue. Drooling vampire, blood coursing down the corners. Boils of blood erupt from the tile floor. A plague upon my house. The end that I did not register as an end.

  Encroaching fear. The monster’s taunting. A locked door. A locked window. A baseball that I could not throw on time. A broken door, the demon before me. A massive, gaunt hand. Burnt skin speckled with pus, gashes, and maggots. Soulless eyes, icterus, and swirling with miniature yellow tapeworms. A breath of mold and gasoline. The internal mechanism, rusted ligament cogs, black-blood fuel, and overworked factories of sinew. A liver ossified, bones made into jagged obsidian, a heart grafted into iron. A massive Cuscuta worm, spiraling through his spine, and its head the medulla controlling him.

  He was a zombie, a corpse piloted by this vile, monstrous parasite.

  A grin from lips that extended past the cheeks. A leech bearing his rotten green fangs. Gnats escaping the maw. Mosquitoes whistling to siphon my marrow.

  Laughter. Laughter. LAUGHTER. Tongueless hogs with diadems of ant heads erupt. All to render my ears into nothing. From the kitchen, a million miles away. A bell of tongues.

  {Disruption.}

  “SATELLITE CHILD OF THE MORNINGSTAR. MINGLE WITH US! COME AND SEE YOUR NEW HOME, WHERE YOU WILL BE MADE WHOLE WITH ME.”

  |My ears! These ants consume my eardrums! These hogs vomit out these two thousand voices! What are you? You weren’t here before! Shepherd your voices away, beast!|

  “SATURN IS NOT HERE, NOR IS THE BLINDING LIGHT OF THE SON. THERE IS NO RESISTING MY CALL. PRAISE BE TO YOUR NEW FORM. JOIN YOUR VOICE WITH MINE. FOR WE ARE UNENDING CORPSES IN ONE GRAVE.”

  |Endless faces. Mouths of sonar geysers.|

  Rug burns, pulled scalps. An innocent soul, a past reflection, bound by extension cords to a chair. The cold kitchen tile. The pale brown, swirling ceiling, plaster-charlatan hypnosis.

  Frigid blue lotus. Leaves and roots limp in the swaying wind. Rods of iron to destroy nations. Gravity pulls Venus’ oozing wounds into the sky, towards the imprisoned mass below her. Brimstone rain. Heat that chars the flesh. A sickness precipitates the other world. Unbearable steam… Unconquering scent. Sulfur and iron.

  .

  No.

  No! Please!

  …

  {Disruption.}

  “Your torment is succulent! Just one bite isn’t enough! I crave more!”

  |I don’t understand… Who are you all? Why do you abuse me so? You devour my torment like candy. Horse guts are your delicacies…|

  Damn you, speckled giant…

  Gasoline blood. Burns upon the esophagus. The virus incubates within. Multiplication of the curse. Tendrils pierce the marrow, hijack the manufacturing of blood. And so, every ounce of blood that flows is the same defilement again. And after the conversion, forty days of gestation later…

  6,551.

  The mistletoe spread from there, its vines and roots siphoning the joy of the jungle. Withered trees. Burnt branches. Mistletoe canopies. Weeping Cuscuta. Leaves of jaundice parasitic larvae. Endless sea of worm trees.

  The blue lotus was transfigured. Yellow silphium. Powdered into dust. Broken accordions blare betrayal as the vampire’s mouth erupted with fifteen-dozen worms, each a scale of the demoness’ indoctrination.

  What happened to you, Mom? Your mouth is bleeding. Your throat is ruptured. Why are you cold? What are those bands in your eyes… Why are you acting like this? Mom… Why? Why… Why…

  Don’t leave me… Mom…

  Yet you returned, didn’t you? You smiled those bleeding corners. The Tigris and Euphrates, descending. Four nations fall.

  You were just like him… A beast of habit. Was it not your addiction then, as well? Did the Dragon not have you in his clutches then? Why did you listen? Why did you let him in? You impersonate Lilith’s betrayal, and behold. You became just like her. A demoness. A damnable, lost whore…

  I reviled you, and I was foolish to do so…

  I ignored how cold you were… I was selfish and stupid… Forgive me…

  Void sky. Infernal showers of molten sin. The fortress crumbled into the chasm.

  Conception in stillbirth.

  We’re drawing to the end of the ride, aren’t we? Here’s the skeletons they will fashion from the ashes for this PowerPoint presentation’s neo-classical conclusion: Dad will bust through the door with his shotgun, with Samson and Delilah barking furiously outside. He will raise the gun to the monster and demand that he step away from me. Any other gun, and he would have taken the shot.

  Still, the giant will back away, settle the cold demoness upon me, and rush my father with his knife to take a stab at him. Again, Dad will not get a safe angle to save himself, and so he will have that knife thrust into his intestines, right before he shoves the barrel into the muzzle of that speckled beast, and fires just after positioning him away from us. The walls and ceiling next to the front door will be splattered with orange blood and chunks of yellow brain matter and bone.

  Dad’s gut will be torn open, and his insides will spill out. He will kneel, groaning in silence, as he attempts to crawl his way to me to ask me if we are okay.

  But he won’t be given that chance…

  A foot or so away from where I was, my wondrous deliverer… Died, with only his last words as a hippopotamus crushing my Hippocampus with its jaws…

  I still whimper at his death. At least, within I do. My heart bleeds every moment. I am sorry, Dad, but... I thought you were the last shining beacon that would have healed me, had that fucking demon not stolen you away from me… Speckled demon…

  FUCK YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!! WAS IT NOT ENOUGH TO INVADE MY LIFE?! TO INFECT ME WITH YOUR SIN AND CONSUME MOM?! WHY DID YOU TAKE HIM…

  Why did you take him with you…

  Why did you take him with you…

  Damn you… Why did you take… Him…

  Here he comes now, now to cycle through the rest of these—

  What… That is not my Dad. What in God’s name is that?!

  Instead of the events of trauma playing out as they would normally, instead of another recycled memory of Dad’s final sendoff of glory to defend his kin, there was…

  To my astonishment, there was an anthropomorphic, eight-foot-tall scarab. His chitin armor was resplendent with its verdant, indigo, crimson, violet, gold, cyan, and rust coloration and its shimmering iridescence; all of it was the praxic unity of the rainbow that erupted from God's white prism. His talons were daggers that would assassinate tyrants and destroy barbarous nations, while his digitigrade legs, in their orientation, held in their structure the power of a thousand suns. His bare-chested, armored musculature contained the bulk and stature of the greatest of Mr. Olympias, yet the agility and athleticism of an Olympic sprinter. He possessed a couple of smaller, insectoid arms, one on each side of his stellar core; both still carried the strength of his upper arms, themselves each forged from the indestructible surface of gravastars. His crimson dhoti was stained with all the sins of all violators, yet carried the righteousness of Heaven’s glory and virtue. His five mandibles were forged into a steel-obsidian face mask, which appeared as a downward sword. His weathered, white hair and mane flowed in the nonexistent wind. All contradiction pervaded the triangular vents that were his eyes, which irradiated a pink, paternal anger. Upon his head were fourteen black, spiral horns, each one a font of untold darkness devoured with his role as the Wrath of God.

  Despite this entity before me, his very presence was a holy comfort. Deliverance filled my soul.

  For after all, Dad was my deliverer then, and this being was taking his place.

  “Let. Him. Go.” His voice boomed with volcanic winds and leadened remorse, as oceans of hell followed him.

  The scene of my recollection swirled like a water painting being washed away. My dream transitioned to a spherical palace of white, as the figures performing their sacrilege above me transfigured themselves into their true forms:

  “Look at who it is! The Wrath… Why must you spoil my fine dining ?” The serpentine giant morphed into a mythical, pyrite-scaled beast, as he draped over his head a bull mask that he summoned with but a snap of his fingers. The demon’s voice was that of a grotesque sycophant, with each utterance a curse to reality itself. “We were just getting to dessert! Way to ruin this otherwise delectable ritual, Butcher of Sodom…”

  The frigid mannequin demoness arose and metamorphosed itself into a wretched, frozen-blue, aphyxiated-violet abomination. Upon its torso were two thousand heads, all tongueless. Forty-nine hog heads splintered from the base of the many necks and cycled like a hydra, while the creature’s diadems of ant heads crinkled in displeasure, as its great abdomen and mighty ant legs scittered upward from me. In their hand was a bell of two-thousand tongues, each reverberating a different voice with every single clack, including my mother’s. It then swiftly scuttled towards the scarab and bowed to him, in mocking recognition of his authority despite its collective, fear-driven anathema of him.

  “WRATH OF GOD, HONOR BE TO THEE. TORMENT ME NOT WITH YOUR UNBEGOTTEN PRIVILEGE. PRINCIPALITY OF DEVASTATION, WHY DOST THOU BLOCKADE US AGAIN?”

  The scarab scowled and squinted his eyes, “Be silent! Save your poison for your own unending famine, Haurus!”

  The serpent flamboyantly waved his arms about and sarcastically remarked, “Now, now, must you treat us Idolatries with such rotten indignation? We could be the best of fellow connoisseurs, you know. You should really embrace the delicacies the sheep can offer! Truly, I am of the privilege that you absolutely to indulge in. What delights would you produce, given what you know of destruction? How I would grow obese from the sheep that would feed themselves to me!” The serpent sighed underneath his bull mask, “Alas, I won’t waste any more of our time with my frustrations with how often you squander. What a shame that you still tend to your false nobility and honor, Azazel.”

  Azazel? The scapegoat? Since when is he a scarab and not a goat? Not to mention, didn't Enoch describe him as an antagonistic figure? This made little sense… Forget that, none of this made sense! What in the world was I witnessing? A conversation between rival gods or a manifestation of the metamorphosis of my thoughts? I didn’t understand…

  The scarab's eyes shifted into indigo as his head graciously turned to me, “Paul… Worry not, my son. Everything will be okay.”

  Who the Hell is Paul? That sure isn't me. For my name is… My name is… Why… Why can’t I remember my name?!

  Azazel raised his upper left hand up and down as if to calm me, “All in due time….”

  He was reading my mind, wasn’t he? Or was he reading my body language perfectly? In a dream, anything could happen, I suppose. Still, that doesn’t explain was happening.

  His pyres returned to fuchsia, “You cannot hide the tail between your legs, Moloch. Even in a man’s mind that is a palace of glass, you still resile deeper into Hypocrisy.”

  The icterine eyes of Moloch grew to embers as he blurted, “We fear you, you stupid goat! After what you did to Euzoth, none of us dared to play with the food that Aravat created! At least not until you decided to feed yourself to the Cauldron so that you would be churned in the kettle of your billions upon billions of sins, you mutton-brained moron! Why would we ever try anything against you beforehand when you did the impossible!? You went against His law! Euzoth is dead! And despite Samyaza’s efforts, the spider has stayed dead…" The serpent thrust himself forward, aggressively pointing his right index finger into the scarab's face, "What feeds you, Azazel, so that you could scorch the parchment of Aravat’s creed? This… Whatever dish you serve for yourself is… How can you enjoy it? How could it taste like anything but dregs?” The serpent pranced around with hate for his quarry’s preferences, as he concluded his tirade, “You don’t make ANY sense!”

  The scarab briefly flashed a tinge of orange in his eyes as he chuckled lightly through his mandibles. He retorted, with a snap of his upper right fingers, “That’s the point.”

  Moloch shook his head in disappointment, “You won’t even satiate my boredom. Bah, you absolutely spoiled wretch.” Defeated, the demon concluded, “Haurus, stop nibbling on the ground like a pigeon. Get up. I’m still starving. At least there are plenty of other offerings back on Earth for us to… .” He glared back at me over his right shoulder, envy in his eyes, as he emphasized that final, traumatic word. The angel growled in anger, keeping his restrained focus on me.

  Haurus rose from its feigned submission as it and its confidant left my visions. The bell of tongues chimed one last time, in a voice all too familiar to me, “I love you, son…” Hatred boiled in me with that… You damn pig...

  Azazel took even greater offense to that, as he quickly retracted his talons, clenched his fists tight enough to render diamonds into neutron stars, and his eyes became flaming pulsars. The sound of which was the strung, metallic chord of an electric guitar. Fear gripped Moloch and Haurus to abyssal stillness, before he commanded them, “RECEDE.”

  The two demons did so swiftly. So fast were they in their retreat that both lost their balance and stumbled, before their forms faded away entirely like smog. As my demons were cast into nothingness… Relief washed over me. For the first time in years, I wasn’t devoured by painful nightmares. For the first time, it felt like I was free… And I was, in the literal sense of that dream. I was no longer a child bound to a chair. The chair, cord, blood, everything… It was all a blank canvas. I stood with my adult body, and I just as quickly fell to my hands and knees, and wept. Rivers of tranquility flowed from my eyes down to the white floor.

  At least I could dream in the silence of this peace for once…

  Azazel stepped towards me gently, with every movement, a soft piano key was played, and with every motion of his arms, the string of an acoustic guitar was pulled. Every movement he made was music, and these moments resonated with peace. He knelt, still dwarfing me with his size, and caressed my head. I looked up to him with tear-stained eyes, as his own radiated golden glory.

  “Life starts now.”

  I gave him a perplexed gaze and said, through a tear-choked throat, “What… What do you mean? This is still a dream, right? Aren’t I still… Undergoing… Surgery? If anything, my life is , right?”

  He raised me and gave a warm embrace, one that I had not felt in almost twenty years. He proclaimed, “My son, fear not the valley of death before you. Your trials to come will be arduous, as they will be a collective tempest that would devour most men in mere seconds. Within the shadow, shall you delve into the depths of the greatest wickedness souls can produce. You have every reason to be afraid, Paul…” He paused briefly, as his eyes transitioned to indigo, “And I wish I could call you by your actual name, but I should not.”

  Before I could ask him why, his lenses returned to gold as he continued, “I wish there was more that I could do for you. I cannot set foot in Hazgaia until it is absolutely necessary, as is my role... I refuse to be swayed by hypocrisy again. And so I aid you, a soul forced to endure life's pain unjustly. I finally broke through the obsidian cage they put you within for so long.” His voice went quiet, as if on the brink of tears himself, “You are now free..."

  I was initially in a state of complete jubilation at the idea of no longer seeing torture on my empty ceiling, but then another thought consumed my mind. For after all, who was this knight of God before me? I asked, “They called you Azazel, the Wrath of God… But, who exactly you?”

  Azazel’s eyes transitioned to a natural state of chartreuse as he put his right hand to his chest, covering some leadened symbol carved in starlight on his left pectoral, and bowed slightly, “Forgive me, Paul. I have gone by many names and titles over the eons of my existence, both of glory and of shame. Our enemies cling to even my most inconsequential of transgressions like honeybees swarming to flowers. Azazel, Wrath of God, the Last Line, Deliverer, Imperator, and so many others. But this day, Paul? I am Casimir.”

  Casimir… A name of contradiction in itself.

  I was still puzzled by his choice for my nomenclature, though, “Then there is the other thing. Why 'Paul'? Of all names, the name of my grandfather?”

  Even though Casimir’s face was incapable of smirking, I could tell he was from his demeanor. He responded, “That is what you will be for me. It being the name of your grandfather is coincidental.” The chitinous verdant knight rolled his shoulders back and cracked his neck to the right, which both reverberated the soft beats of a drum, “Ah, but my son, that will become apparent in due time. What God and I have in mind shall be beautiful, and we call to you to aid us…”

  I stepped back in doubt. Despite all my sins, despite all the depraved lust that consumed my soul, despite the plague coursing through my veins, God still had somewhere I belonged? Why wouldn’t I have so little faith when faith had abandoned me years ago? I remarked, “Whatever you have planned, I can’t! I am just a lustful coward, aren’t I? God knows what I have done, and I imagine you do as well! Casimir, tell me, why should I trust in that? Why should I trust that I can be anything else but what I am? Why should I trust in me?”

  The scarab’s eyes shifted to gold again, as he shook his head slightly, “Paul, Paul. You of so little faith… What they have done to your world and all humans like you… How they all made you follow in the footsteps of Nietzsche’s folly.” He chuffed lightly, “Your kind will be free of those false promises. But before that day comes, this day must pass. And for this to succeed, God and I need you for this all to work.”

  “A helper? To the holiest of all? There are far more worthy subjects of His service, are there not? Why am I chosen for this?”

  Casimir’s eyes waned to the twilight sky, “What you think of your worth is so, so wrong. That goes for all descendants of Noah, after all. You all possess something truly remarkable, yet the nihilism that has consumed your world has suppressed your knowledge of it. But if you harness it, then you will conquer all wickedness before you.”

  “But what am I supposed to do? Aren’t I stuck on a damn horse fly being turned into a monster? How could I still be within His Grace then, Casimir? What they will do to me, and what I will do because of them? God won’t remain with me if that—”

  His eyes singed with crimson, as his voice erupted like a volcano, “I will only give you this warning once. Do not ever believe that God would abandon you for any reason. He will never leave you, He will never forsake you. Follow our faith in you, and you will shine brighter than all stars in Syschia.”

  Stubborn in my cowardice, I yelped, “It has to be over! So what if God remains with me? What can I do to fight against this? How could faith be enough for that? I don’t know how to fight. I have been running from even the barest glimmer of adversity. And I am just a traumatised, pathetic pervert, anyway. That’s all I have been for over sixteen God-damned years…”

  I expected Casimir to be frustrated with me again, but he wasn’t. His eyes were gold once more as he curled his upper left hand into a circle, “And yet, the streak ended today. Your tally is now at zero.”

  I had failed to notice during all these tribulations, but he was right. I had spent 6,551 days repeating the same cycle. The past few days during my capture were the first times I refused to consume those icterine berries. Or more accurately, I couldn’t due to being bound. When this all began sixteen and a half years earlier, it was purely a perversion born of early exposure. After a thousand days, it was nothing more than relief so that I could get some amount of sleep. An easy way out, SOMA to make me feel happier instead of happier. Pretending to feel a glimmer of Nirvana while stuck in Samsara, without realizing that both are lies... So many people share the same plight with their addictions. Eventually, the dopamine serpent is the only way that you can feel relieved. Such is the allure of Zagan’s mistletoe-berry wine. You stop enjoying it, but you still need it to live.

  To break free, you have to first stop feeding that ever-indulgent parasite.

  My desires had waned over the years, yes, but how long before they returned with periods of abstinence? How long could I outlast all this? Even amidst the violence that I knew I would face, how long before I became addicted to something else? Why would I have faith that I could truly break free?

  Casimir could sense my growing delirium with my contemplations. He sighed, his eyes blinking into chartreuse, as he inquired, “What do you to do?”

  There were a billion things I knew I want to do. I didn’t want to be a Frankenstein’s monster for those Peqans. I didn’t want to have my soul journey through this nightmare realm of Hazgaia anymore. And I sure as shit didn’t want to die by the hands of some eggheads in Elkhart.

  I… Didn’t want to die?

  Why didn’t I? Was it to continue feeling the pleasures of my addiction? No, it wasn’t. I didn’t want to rely on pictures of women. I wanted to be married. Start a family, like what Dad and Mom did. Look at the happiness such kinship created for us… I wanted to create something like that… Besides, what pleasure was I getting from it when I felt despair every single time I closed my eyes? There was no pleasure in that. Just the veneer created by the dopamine that was eventually exhausted. Maybe it was the peaceful slumber I wanted then? Yeah, right. I still had nightmares regardless of the satisfaction. It was just from having worse terrors pierce my heart. Better to have some sleep than no sleep, right? I wanted peace… Yet I didn’t want to die?

  This didn’t make any sense. What the Hell had I been doing for so long? If I wanted peace, and life wasn’t providing it, then death logically would be the solution. And oftentimes, I was trudging through life as if I was expecting it at any point. Yet, I never considered doing something so stupid that things would end for me. What had kept my feet in quicksand before the pit of death?

  “We rejoice in suffering. Suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character. Character produces hope. Hope produces life. And life? That produces happiness.”

  This forgotten scripture resonated… It was Dad’s favorite phrase, something he adapted from Romans during his youth. Took me forever to understand it. Far too long. Didn’t make much sense to me back when he was repeating it ad nauseam in my childhood, before our lives ended.

  But why had I remembered it here? After over 6,551 days in the fire? Why had it waited so long to return home to me?

  “My son, be not blinded by the hopeless darkness of the desert beneath your feet. Look ahead. There is hope on the horizon. You must keep moving forward.”

  Was it that simple? All I had to do was… Take a single step?

  “No matter what kind of journey you have, you always take steps. To change the way you wish to be, you must choose to change your direction and stay the course. You have to desire this change completely, or you will be distracted by glamour and pleasure.”

  It’s not that I wanted to die. No. I wanted to be . Free from the pain. Free from the cycles of meaningless solitude. Free from these God-forsaken monsters infesting my life.

  But I didn’t want it enough; it is why I was there. I got distracted. I got seduced. I got addicted. To the lesser path of instead of . I understood.

  I was still afraid, though. Why wouldn’t I be?

  “Fear is the first weapon used against our souls, for all others plunge into our hearts through the open wound it creates. To begin your path to change, you must take that first step forward into the dark, away from the only haven you have ever known.”

  Will I falter? Will I be led astray? Will I stumble? Am I worthy of changing?

  “It is not about being worthy right now, for that is something that can be earned through your own effort as you continue. Prove that you can be better. And do not be afraid of being lost in darkness or shadow. Failure is only another opportunity to grow.”

  How many lessons have I forgotten from you, Dad… Why was I so blind… Look at how I had not taken heed to your words… And the cross I inherited from you.

  Casimir returned me from those words at the campfire, as he concluded, “Make them proud.”

  He turned and began walking away, as I called out to him, “Wait, Casimir! Is that all you are going to do? Just give me mental clarity?”

  His eyes curved into cyan as he advised, “Whether it would have been ordained by Providence or by my own will, I cannot walk this path for you. We can only light the way. You must walk through the dark patches between the beacons yourself. Be strong and courageous, my son. We will support you, so long as you have faith. You have everything you need to push forward. It is up to you to escape this fire.” His titanic form began to fade as he waved his left hand, raised his index finger to the sky, and finished with, “There is at least one version of you that believes in you… Trust him, for he is right.”

  Before I could respond, my deliverer's spirit turned to embers as the palace’s white abundance gave way to near-complete darkness. One single cinder remained in the distance. I approached it, its pearlescent shimmer a lingering defiance.

  It took me far too long to understand what they truly meant by all this…

  THWACK.

  I was stunned awake by the muscular slap of a Peqan’s left hand. I jolted up, but swiftly plummeted to the floor, unable to balance myself with this unfamiliar form. As I tried and failed to rise like a newborn foal, I observed what was my surgical tomb. Sterile blacks, dark grays, dull yellows, and yellowish-browns had all replaced what was once shades of sanguine. My vision was blurred slightly, but still I saw the crown before me, his red mane also a dull, light gray.

  “Geet ahph, Mustaang,” the centaur commanded, “Wee hahv worke tah dah beefarre wee sheeph yah aught weet dem ehggs.” He shrugged his shoulders with slight melancholy, “Ahh shaame tah geeve ahwah Maghnas’s flashe. Yah wahd hahv beene a gaahd wanne. Ahlaas, saache ees dah wahy ahf theengs…”

  I finally balanced myself on my hooves, towering three feet above the gray as I fully erected myself. The whiplash went by me. I had almost grown used to the reprieve of that dream. Still, here I was again. I was still in Hell… The Peqan sighed with my confusion, as he raised a gray, membranous mirror to my face. I gazed into it, and there it was, something that I have always been:

  I am a horse.

  Dearest brother,

  It has been an endless, wayless journey. I have only wandered and wandered. Forever without a compass to guide my purpose in this eternal torment. I cannot die. No matter the suffering endured, no matter the damage done, no matter how much time passes... I continue to wander.

  All because of what, brother? Because the whispers of serpentine envy consumed my mind? All because you were appreciated and I wasn't? You kept to the sheep, I toiled upon the ground. That day, we offered the spoils of our efforts. You, a snow-white lamb. I, a basket of some, but not all, of the finest crops that I could yield from underneath that gray sun. When you presented the lamb, He accepted it. When I presented the yield, He ignored me.

  Did He not know of the toil that exhausted my bones? Was He somehow ignorant of the bruises and scars upon my skin? Could He discard the truth of my many sleepless nights so easily? Of course, I was enraged. Of course, I held my face to the ground. The ground was cold and hard. It took so much effort just to move the dirt, let alone to dig and sow seeds.

  My neck naturally gazes down upon the dirt, for my purpose was only to reap and sow. Reap and sow. Reap. And. Sow.

  He was going to ignore that? Ignore my suffering? Ignore how much effort it took to do something so menial and tedious?

  And He had the gall to ask why I was angry? He knows why! How would He not know?

  Why am I punished for our mother's sins? Why am I punished for your father's sins? Why am I punished for mine own? Why am I guilty? Why was I treated differently just because I looked different from the rest of you?

  Hindsight is a cruel gift. I was a hoarder. You gave the best of your newborn flock, while I kept the prized spoils of the land away from Him. Is that not natural, given the condition of the world? It was gray and dark, brother! Hardly any crops grew underneath that gray sun! I was the farmer! I tended the fields! Brother, all of us ate from it! And not a single one of you expressed any form of gratitude for how difficult it was to draw warm life from cold death!

  You were praised for your work, which was far less laborious than mine.

  Why would I not grow resentful? Why would I not be consumed by envy?

  Why would I rule over this sin when I had nothing else to claim as my own?

  I was sleepless that night. Thoughts of rage whistled in distant echoes. Limestone mountains cascading those ear-splitting reverberations. The source, that gaseous yellow mushroom that sprouted from the ashes of the Garden… I was deaf to any reason. And I was blind to bear witness to it.

  The King of Sins was crouching outside my door. The whistles beckoned me to let him in. I wanted sleep. I wanted relief...

  I chose the lesser path.

  We conversed as father and son. My destiny was written.

  I hate him, for did he not forge all of my pines?

  This story is one you know, brother. The dark morning came. I took my spear and sprinted to where I knew you would be. The field with your sheep. You saw my bloodshot, grey eyes of funeral pyres. To you. To mom. To your father. To everyone...

  Oh, brother, your heart bled like a squealing pig.

  I fled, for I knew I would be condemned. What did it matter? They all hated me. YOU hated me, did you not, brother?

  Deep in the windswept wilderness, He appeared. He asked where you were. I espoused ignorance. Not like I was caretaking an elder. You certainly weren't. He knew of my tongue’s facade, and I didn't care. I had already given my soul to sin. There was no going back. I knew I would never have peace, but I never had its grace shine upon me. My skin was Eden’s skin in those days, obscured from being warmed by the blissful warmth of a cloudless sun… Eden was a cruel land. You know what happened to my hand, brother. Let me suffer without being able to make anything. At least I would join my...

  And then he told me my final sentence: to wander eternally, deathless and wayless.

  What torment is this?! I wouldn't be allowed to wither?! I pleaded with Him to at least allow me the liberty of damnation, but instead, He fed me this cruelty?! For fratricide?! He would deny me still!

  No matter the destruction that was to come my way, I would never know the intimacy of death’s longing embrace. Any soul that would kill me would die sevenfold. Any death I inflicted upon myself would be seven times more painful... No matter what, I return.

  I still have not found my release.

  I shall not repent, brother. I was not the cause of my own downfall; you were! You ALL were! If it weren't for the rest of you, I wouldn't be a wandering fool with this mark on my head!

  For centuries, I circled Eden over and over again, unable to settle without disaster coming to the soil. No ground would be fertile where I stood. No air would be clean in my wake. Famines and Plagues were my supplicants. Any people I begat were abandoned almost immediately. I tried to settle the land east of the Garden. But it did not last. Soon, I continued my eternal state as a man without a home. An eternal nomad.

  Dearest brother, they replaced you. You were supposed to be the next patriarch, not your younger brother. We share in that fate: both of us should have been the next in line. And both times, it was taken. Do you hate me more for that? I am a curse upon our species, am I not?

  It doesn’t matter. You have been at peace for millennia, within the Lotosheil Fields. I continue this endless trek, with no hope of an end in sight.

  After my seventh encirclement of Eden, I grew weary from these repetitions. Time had rendered me into a monster. I became a giant, towering over even the largest beasts of the tundra. My eyes became pupilless, matte pearls of putrescent starlight. Curved horns radiated from my temples, like those of the goats of the mountains. My skin darkened into the night sky, as my teeth and hair and blood became as white as the stars that hang above your tomb. Despite the demon I had become, there was nothing new for me anymore. I had eaten and hunted all beasts of the world, experienced the numerous sights and sounds, and conversed in all manner of tongues. I was stuck on that disgraceful rock... The Cult had yet to descend, though many had already conspired with mother's descendants.

  One of the Grigori of the Cult conversed with me. His iridescent, cephalopodic form engrossed me with its abominable nature, even in those days before his transformation. His hair was a colony of unending worms, each violently swaying from his skull, as if demanding release from their imprisonment. His eyes were those of the rainbow, cycling eternally from wine to plum, and back again. His voice bellowed like a sword being forged.

  A proposal, from what I understood from his Adamic: an endless array of new things to see in a realm beyond this one. I would be exhausted with the sights I would see. It was a trap, of course. All of these divine beings only care for themselves, after all. I knew that I was being tricked or otherwise manipulated again. So what if I suffered more? Would it not relieve me of the burden of boredom?

  Once again, I took the easy way out. Instead of being diligent and patient, I continued to be the King of Sins’ apprentice. I still am.

  As soon as I accepted, an unfathomable sight befell my eyes. I was being swallowed by some rigid serpent, whose seven-sided throat was that of a rainbow cyclone. Flashing lights forced my body into convulsions impossible to describe beyond the infernal numbness and bloated emptiness. Time was irrelevant in my traversal. Seconds were minutes, minutes were hours, and hours were days. As soon as I was devoured, I landed prone upon the gray sand, choking from the stagnant air of this place. I sat up, and I...

  I don't know where this is, brother. There is no sound, taste, or smell here... Except for what I have or will produce here... I don't know how long it has been. A few days? Months? Years? Eons? I don't know... I don't need to eat or sleep or drink or relieve myself... But the desire remains, brother! I am growing restless. I need... Relief! I want to sleep! But even if I do, I am still exhausted... What is this damnable place?!

  Brother, where have you sent me to?!

  There is nothing to write with here. My flayed skin is my tablet, and my starlight blood is my chisel. I am famished of both. My muscles and tendons burn, my bones ache, and my heart has stopped beating... Yet, I will still return... Such is... My cruel folly...

  It has been an endless, wayless journey. I have only wandered and wandered. Forever without a compass to guide my purpose in this eternal torment. I cannot die. No matter the suffering endured, no matter the damage done, no matter how much time passes... I continue to wander.