Castitas

Bells tinkled the wave of footsteps that strolled a retreat.

Frustration gnarled in my chest as compacted bales of uprooted nettle-bushes—though rationally, his judgement was sound. “I guess all arbitration’s about weighing who Creation’s better off serving and who’s better smeared in the dirt. You know what he’s done, though.” I glanced over my shoulder.

“I know an allegation, friend,” he said primly. (Discomfort shaded his voice—he trussed the reins of his rhino, to mount) “Of a gravity I must find corroborated. I do hear seriously what you say. But were I one to judge quickly and harshly, friend, you would also be subj—”

(Words prattled on but his composure snapped as) the palatines on their camels (Midway across the plateau) (Air boiling over their shapes) (His form dangling off a saddle) had taken Hejat.

Then in the dry bush—a wildfire—sparked, annihilation of all thought by combustion—uncontrolled from a ballista out shot a tapered knife of alabaster, haloed with napalm—and coursing through the air my body on-target swooping to rip him off of the saddle, him and him alone to hop off the hump and ferry him away into the sands to keep him and thresh him and make him mine, my claws extended (to my left the Bishop cried out)

(Ah—right, it was sensible that he would investigate properly)

And caught as much as a goose by an arrow, myself an inch from crashing onto Hejat’s neck in a momentum too vicious for even an emergency wingbeat to possibly break, an impact speared through me, that deflected my vector sharply into the earth—my back struck the ground, I was pinned.

For the impact continued—in a jet, that squeezed me down, beneath a continuous torrent not of water, but of brilliantly pressured platinum light, that in ceaseless surges and surges and surges never relenting battered me, and because it pinned me I couldn’t flee and because it battered me I couldn’t breathe but only flail as the light seared into every vessel and all of me was disintegrating.

And all of my body was melting away—did melt away—because the beams quashed everything they touched—but I must have a body if I was screaming and thrashing this much, because new flesh would form, not even full limbs, but flashes of a hand or stretched skin between light-chutes that combusted too quickly to resolve—and like the pulp of a peach around its hard seed, around the pit of my soul was a flesh padding, pallid white as medicine, itself cased in a gooey shell that no brutal iron spear could nick, being so thick, but only shift sticky globs, but which the humming fission-light had punctured. And the padding flowed out, leaking, like a pierced eyeball, vitally leaking, and I scraped for more padding to hold me but through my grip it slipped gushing away, my body couldn’t hold it was gushing away, with no substance to form me I was gushing away—myself, extinguishing—so it cut me, it actually cut me, and like it had been the first time (remember!) for all how I flirted, ‘oh death oh death, oh kill me oh kill me!,’ these presentiments of a true reaper, (because they wear white, the real ones), true obliteration, and true oblivion, pulsed me into no snotty acceptance but absolutely foaming, and rabid, animal panic.

Oh God, he was killing me! I couldn’t stop it. I’d die!!

From amid the surges of light, at the focal point under the spyglass, arose yowls, and wails, inarticulately more beast than man, of languageless begging. ‘I’ll obey! Stopppp!’; it was all I could do. All I could think to do.

And screams pealed inside me too. Souls screamed inside me too, the prisoners screamed inside me too—not in accordance to my terror, but their always constant scream; of a fear like this, and a death like this, from which there was no release. (Good! Maybe someone then can feel how I)—no, I didn’t think that way at all. Like little kernels amid the mush, they were gushing out too... it didn’t make me like dying, but I hoped, in a strangely placid kind of hope, that by this they might escape. I fell quiet, watching them go...

But they didn’t go...

Sobriety shook me alert. How weren’t they going? Satchjeir, Attija, Tjan... the kernels spilled out, but I still heard their voices—instead of dissolving into the light, their hearts had dissolved into me, and the ‘kernel’ was only the pip by which I could cohere them out.

It escaped me suddenly how to spell their names; the letters, the syllables; and I lost the capacities, I could feel their capacities dropping out of me one-by-one like loose teeth. Ephemeral as ghosts I reached out but a dank mist met me, in the indistinct muck of a swamp, where there were silhouettes dying, silhouettes of men still dying, and I didn’t know who they were, I couldn’t place who they were, one might’ve been Tjan but I couldn’t pronounce her name that, if it was, she would’ve heard me.

Into the scouring light the last shreds of their souls vaporised; gone, the last conduit that separated us, and the last button that could be pressed for their mercy. The Bishop didn’t know!

Under the jetstream, I flung out my arm, onto the earth, as though to drag myself out of the torrent, and I felt like I was scooping in my own disembowelled entrails, for how frantically into the light I sacrificed everything that was not those kernels, yet the gush of pith continued and into its current the pips fled—and I, scooping, as with a teaspoon, lemon pips out of tea, caught every one, back to the surface of the water.

Then on it poured—and little was left, though I pulled and dragged and scratched and squirmed for purchase of even an inch free, no longer flailing, no longer yowling so madly, but focused through the panic and fear, to truly, truly, escape this, with them, what little flesh remained in me was still going, dwindling, dwindled, and I’d barely moved a finger’s breadth, the knife of light stable in my spine, and I wilted in grief that these last ones would go too.

Then like a closed tap, the pressure abated.

I gasped, a drowned rat, all fours on the sand. Smears of pink and platinum smoked off me into the wind.

The Bishop glared with his hand aloft and his mouth twisted in a complex grimace. It wasn’t an omen of forgiveness. It just stunned him I hadn’t yet died.

He knew I was close, though, as tigers know a sick wildebeest, despite the outward seamlessness of my body, which mended itself in the breath that the light-rays relented. In spirit I plastered my palm to the open gash in my side, slathered in blood, sticky, trembling, terrified.

The rhinoceros and the palatines had long backed away, made into spectators or evacuees. I couldn’t even care if they were the latter. The same animalistic senses that would have slung me after Hejat, were he being ferried, presently only cared about obeisance to the Bishop, because he could kill me.

And I trembled because I wasn’t sure whether he would be merciful.

His attention on me tightened as taut as an overtuned string. By a shift and a squint, the judgement settled, the gavel rose, and the hand crooked higher—

“Wait,” I exclaimed.

The Bishop snapped his hand shut—and into sheer white, the world cauterized.

And I was in an empty white brick room. It was a mausoleum. It didn’t have things inside it, like coffins, or shelves, and it was all clean and flat, but it had a big door on one side with little windows above it, and outside it was all carved and pretty, and it was a mausoleum. Inside it was day but outside it was night. I recognized the room because it wasn’t a real room. It was one I made up before. I was in here because I was very hurt and it was safe.

I was very very hurt. Things outside were rumbling. It was funny because I knew I was hurt but there wasn’t pain. I guess it’s like a hole? My left side where it was was bad with lots of blood. I didn’t like that. It made me feel worried, not super worried, because I was in the room, but maybe it would be like that forever? I didn’t want to go outside. So I was in the room. I liked the room. Nothing bad happens in the room because I’m smart and I keep it so clean. You can’t do anything in the room though. You have to stand or sit, or you can walk in circles a bit. If something is like something forever does that just mean that’s what it is now? In some stories witches turn boys into frogs. No, I didn’t like that. I really didn’t like that...

I itched the wound. It stayed ragged, open. I licked my fingers like cats do when they’re hurt. That was kind of weird. Plasters have to go over the cut. My hands weren’t hurt, it was my side that was hurt. So that means I don’ t know how to do plasters. Outside it rumbled badly, so badly that shingles might fall from the sky.

I sat against the wall. Outside the windows the blackness churned like water. The world would soon end or it wouldn’t.

Then something tickled at my hurt side. A snout peeked out. It was a dog. No, no, it wasn’t a dog; it was the creature of the Hunger, which (guilty eyes tilted upwards) lapped at my injury with meek determination, meek in the knowledge that for its unsolicited help I might smack it, determined in the ruthless fidelity to regardless provide for me all it knew that I needed. Puppy eyes pleading mercy on such a monster. Well, this once, with apocalypse oncoming, and no vital argument, my heart softened for the comfort.

In a jubilant pounce, the Hunger coiled around me svelte as a mist, swift as a fox, boneless and shapeless but like a hurricane, tangible. Its chin snuggled upon my shoulder. For the foreboding white of its teeth and slavering heat of its breath, the beast’s sooty pelt radiated fur so soft, that when wearing it so like a mink coat its thickness and fuzziness near blotted me out in its own dark corona.

I sighed into its hold: another surrender. But oh well. When discounting its pestilence, and regarding just its enthusiasm, in a way forgivable only for brain-damaged invalids, yeah, it’s kind of cute.

Its ears swivelled forward piqued to something outside. Into my lap it swooped down, growling, and barked. Arched over me, at nothing, it barked. Then a tremor coursed through the room. The white brick walls paled transparent.

Outside all around was pure blackness, umbral, thick, and oily with the clogged suggestion of shapes rotating, like submerged weeds screaming to flow through foul waters that oppressed them and tangled them up—amid this horrid expanse, in the sky, there was sliced vertically a golden slit. The whole dark sheared away from it.

Revealed behind all around was a sea of golden ooze. The gold immediately flushed weak and sallow; then from its pit arose a perfect ball of perfect black, ball of moss, impenetrable ash, that stood alone but stately like a chief of stars, which would proceed atop a horse, and scoff at those it passed. It grew massive, both in size and nearness. Its quality so became more apparent.

Its surface was disgustingly charred, and chipped, patterned with subtle topographies of thin layers of ash-flakes that varied in damage. It looked soiled like a burn at the bottom of a cooking pan. The whole ugly orb hummed subtly, with a dim white halo of whispered vibration that, if anyone drew near enough to touch it, or pressed their ear upon it to decipher the words in the murmur, it would obliterate the contacting limb by fission. And were this barrier absent, were one able to touch directly the muck veiled beneath the halo, that muck would glop on them, stick on them, then suck them in, and crush and consume them.

That’s like my soul, I thought stupidly. That is my soul, I dumbstruck corrected.

What a sad ugly thing.

What a shame.

At this hour it’s too late to change. I crossed my wrists on my knees since the Hunger had departed my lap. A few paces away, with ears drooped back sadly, it shifted forefoot to forefoot, staring at me with a peculiar mix of knowledge and apology.

‘I’m sorry that this has to happen,’—that what has to happen? What’s the Hunger so smart about?

“—Ghhk, ghack,” I choked. I gripped my neck.

Stumbling upward onto my knees, as though elevation would hoist me from drowning, I sputtered on sputum as a stream of—sand grains—rushed unceasing down my oesophagus. Root of the river rapid, the grit materialised, upon my tongue, then gushed downward towards my gut, and every particle shoved as if competing to get there. Even bent over and retching my tongue scraped only air. The invaders were intangible, hoodlum poltergeists.

When any grain in the flood hit my stomach, it bobbed momentarily centred, then zipped to the stomach lining. By toxic sheets they melted like waterflies landing upon a sulphurous spring. Then their pith bleached, scoured clean down to their scaffolds, by the acid baptised, and in procession through the gastric membrane, as supplicants reborn through chapel doors into light—they transferred; and specks of white muck bloomed like mould on my core, bit-by-bit, layer-by-layer, a termite’s colony in its ridiculously growing stature, that was renewing the extinguished padding.

An uncomfortable pleasure like water over a burn dripped over my stomach. I felt myself replenishing. I was being force-fed.

As much, my larynx could’ve been strapped to the lactating teat of a dairy cow. Glug glug glug—and glug, and, despite my gasps, glug. I couldn’t gag to modulate the speed of the inflow, nor did any break come to breathe, as though I were buckled down and forced to chug a whole sandstorm through a syringe. Even submission to it was impossible; because regardless of my acts, in would surge the same mass, so quickly that before I could brace to ‘swallow’ any mouthful along, it would streak past, then before I could refocus off shredded by the ‘next’ mouthful too. My choked throat was fluttering around the torrent; a ripped carpet, not even ‘imbibing’. I both recognized I had no control and maniacally refused to simply ‘let’ this be it—because, because, if this was it, then this is, essentially, the end state, forever—this is it, this is all it is—an impersonal, inflicted, no idea what could be entering into me, or what conditions are being incurred outside—because I’m eating something, right? This phenomenon reflects that I’m eating something—so I’m destroying something, every second, I am in this state (though what state?) I must be ruining something and—to cede myself as ‘innocent’ in that is unconscionable.

My legs broke to kneeling. The dark star loomed above. That hideous thing, baleful, vile, a thousand curses seething inside my mouth for it, so vivid through a mist of tears—when the great obsidian mass squeezed itself tight and small, then outward, exploded—

—And I plummeted, pitched as if from a sling, straight down through a cotton-dry zephyr onto the sandy orange sweep of the plateau. At the lip of the crater (I landed in a crater) was the Bishop, with his arm curled over his head, and his legs braced wide as though to shield himself from a strong gust. Crimson flames lilting around his feet petered away. He uncoiled with a gasp.

I struck the ground.

Quickly—this body, but he already saw.

After terrorizing the city, surviving multiple deaths, and ejected from the sky, I looked human.

Sickness sparked inward. All my guts shuddered. Incendiary, the heat of this panic, yet paralysed, in the well of the crater, by an acrid concoction of whizzing cerebral chemicals.

(The Bishop breathily looked down and laughed.)

I needed anything. Claws, fangs, no, even bolder... a marker to assert the difference. Because I’m not this. I’M NOT THIS. —THING, YOU KNOW, FOR YOUR SCRIPTS. But I had lost everything. All the ‘material’ to construct an alternate shape was already drawn; there was no more to pull, I couldn’t ‘add’. And it was, an additive kind of process, to accurately reflect....

(“So that’s your face,” he said.)

To reach for more was like scratching a raw wound. No hide or blubber to insulate. Ravaged weeping sores on my flank. Oh, I really... had the bare minimum. The whole thing’s exposed, ah—

What if I removed my interiors, and used that—

My throat hitched.

Reduce myself!? NO!!

(See, when I think something like that, I should have ears to pin back, BUT I DON’T. I LOOK NORMAL. I already can’t remember if I even cared that much...)

(The Bishop called to the rest of his party, though the sound burbled as if underwater.)

You’re smart, Mephi. Plainly there is logic. To increase, you have to eat something. That’s how you stopped being obliterated.

No, I can’t. No, the sand? No, that’s awful. They’re looking—I don’t want to—well, then it’s not going to be fixed.

Okay. Sorry.

It’s beyond me to handle this.

Just leave me alone.

I know actually how I became a megalomaniac. Aren’t even my most pathetic thoughts edicts the whole world shall follow? Otherwise how can I do so little, except shudder up at the sky, and all goes according to my wish? ‘Leave me alone’. I must be a god...

Or everyone loves me... I’m so unstoppable.

So it was, in the pit, thought rotating like fuzzy clouds, as the body gasped and trembled, heedless of hunger, heedless of Hejat, long after the Bishop and his men departed.