Fear
-🍄-
I'd never thought something people came to on their own will could be so mind-numbingly boring. The priest droning off for hours, the way the other attendants seemed to be attentive to his every word, the silence on the periods of time he asked us to pray…
I'd been born into the religion, but Mom did not force me to practice it after we left. And, of course, the memories I had of the times I had come were blurry, fuzzy. So, while I had been baptized —not of my own desition—, I did not have a connection to the practice. Not in the slightest.
I did remember I would try to worship this god with songs and dances, which only got me purple marks coming up my legs the moment my father found out. Pagan ways, he probably said. The same words as the priest was using right now.
I let out a barely noticeable sigh. If I really had to sit through these lectures to avoid damnation, sign me up for hell.
However, it did seem to be the best way of getting to know the other inhabitants before the market. I hoped to speak to the priest about playing with the choir, at least to get enough to eat in the weeks it would take for the fields around the house to be in producing capacity once again.
I'd never awoken as I had this morning. The hunger that had been bothering me for the entire trip seemed satiated despite me not having ingested anything at all. More than that, it was the first time I felt rested in years. When I left the sweet landscape my dreams had been all night, I did not feel the need to return to sleep. It was a restraint I'd always had to fight myself for, but this morning it had come as narurally as my breath.
Speaking of which, it wasn't often I remembered my dreams, either. I had found myself in a peaceful valley, with the feeling of something watching. Whatever it was, it did not feel dangerous. It was more akin to being supervised. I'd been semi-lucid through it all, and decided to lay upon the grass while what was watching spoke to me in a language I did not understand. A thousand voices caressed me, held me.
I only caught a glimpse of reddish-orange fur before waking up. Matted. The detail was a strange addition, but I did not mind how pleasant it had been at all.
The priest kept speaking with unmatched enthusiasm, and I wondered if it would be appropriate to just walk out. He kept on reading bible passages and verses as if they contained the secret to life in them. I suppose he believed they did.
When he spoke of the devil and warned that he lived to tempt, waiting to steal the souls of whoever gave into the temptation, I heard a small giggle behind me. Yes, stranger, we agreed on that.
The devil probably had better things to do.
“And we have seen the demons in there! We have looked them in the eye and denied them, for we have heard the truth…” He kept droning off, whoever was giggling behind me had not stopped. Everyone ignored it. Was I hearing things? “We have seen them try to enter our homes, and we will not fall for their tricks! I know they are among us, waiting! They’ll tempt you, but you will invoke our lord’s name-”
The priest kept speaking with security, and at some point I zoned out again, ignoring his numbing speech. This morning there had been crows in the trees surrounding the house. Why? I thought there weren't any in this country, I would’ve seeked them out otherwise. It’d always pained me to be unable to befriend a murder. I'd never even seen one until today, they flew away when I opened the front door. They were outside right now as well, the sounds the walls muffled were unmistakable cawing.
Their closing in was starting to scare me. Did they think I had food? I’d read crows ate meat and insects, and they liked shiny things. I did not fulfill even the last of the criteria, not with how bad I looked after the trip. If anything, it felt as if a dull cloud followed be around, either from the neglected state of my body or from my terrible mood. I lamented the loss of the softness of my hair momentarily, along with its shine. When I looked in the mirror this morning my eye-bags had darkened and I looked even paler than usual. Like a ghost, I thought. It’d been a long time since I last looked this bad.
I did not blame Evelyn for being so aggressive at first anymore. If I had seen someone who looked like I did, I wouldn’t have been very hospitable either. I couldn’t wait for the market now, not only to buy food but mostly because I desperately needed to get a bar of soap. I’d make some myself eventually, but the process of getting the ingredients and the entire process would take too long.
This morning a shower’s water had been acceptable, but… It wasn’t nearly enough. I regretted being such a perfectionist with hygiene —if it weren’t for that principle, I would not have minded sleeping in one of the bedrooms last night—, since if I had been otherwise, I would not be suffering this much.
I sighed. Oh, how badly I wished to leave…
It might have been vanity, but, could I really be blamed? I’d never quite gotten rid of the habit, nor did I wish to. I still had a need to look presentable, and that was only if I couldn’t look good.
A few people went up to read a few verses, my neighbors sang chants I hadn't learned, and it was over. I looked outside with a sigh: What a way to waste three hours. I could be fixing that house up instead of-
I waited for a few minutes for people to start leaving, taking a look at the people as they went out. From my place at the back, I saw several families with children, as well as old people. What was most interesting, however, was the people who’d come alone. Several of them seemed strange in a way I couldn’t quite pin down: They had a shine to them, their clothes looked strange. Instead of buttons they had stones on them, the number of fingers just looked off. They were not scary… But something told me to be wary of them.
After a few minutes, when I found it empty enough to go talk to the priest, I bent down to take my violin’s case from under the stool.
When I got up, I felt a shiver in my soul. Someone was touching my shoulder.
Behind me was a tall man, and all the alerts in my brain went off. Unnatural was my first thought; his bones were too long, his red curls were almost too bright. He looked at me with strange eyes, wrong eyes. He looked wrong. Wrong, a voice inside me said, and it was like a switch flipped inside of me. More wrong than the creatures that had passed me by just now. This one… this one was hauntingly wrong.
The fear I felt spread through my body when put my eyes upon him was like nothing I had ever felt before. That smile, a face contorted in a way I was sure no human body could morph into. Sloppy, I thought. The way this thing moved, the way it looked at me. It was a very bad actor.
It felt like a thing… No, not a thing. But definitely not human, not even a little. There was that primal thing again, this time terrified rather than enchanted, telling me to beware. To avoid angering it. To get away from it as soon as I could, and if possible, to barricade the windows once I got home again.
Its voice resounded in my head, and I felt dizzy when my blood rushed to my legs. Run, run. Leave, never come back, don’t look at it, leave, leave, leave.
And yet, something in me was curious enough. Dumb enough to look. To stay.
“Well, hello!” Leave, leave, leave, lea- Its voice was cheerful, like a song, and the way it morphed its lips into what seemed like a smile made cold sweat run down my back. “I hadn’t seen you before, do you perhaps live here now?”
It expected an answer, expected me to tell it, I couldn’t say no, I couldn’t-
Some part of me moved my head up and down, my joints had never in my life felt more stiff. Frozen in place like prey when it’s seen something awful, terrible, evil, evil, beautiful. I could almost see my decomposing corpse in its eyes. I could see everything in its eyes.
“Oh! That does seem nice. It’s been a long time since anyone new came. Tourists tend to get lost. They… they tend to be noisy like that. It’s quite easy if you go out at night” It was taller than me. Bigger. Stronger? I found myself sizing this stranger up. Could I take it in a fight? If it attacked, would I have a chance? “You moved into the farm yesterday, didn’t you?” It smiled again. He smiled again. He, that didn’t fit in the least. The right one came through my thoughts, again a thousand voices trembled and shrieked through my head… It.
“…Yes” I managed to blurt out with the little air I had left in my lungs. It was almost as if I had a hole inside my chest, every bit of bravery I had before this moment was pouring into it at an alarming rate.
It seemed excited at the sound of my voice, the pupils dilated until there was just a thin ring of green iris around them, like the void, like a lake about to drown me and swallow me up. That’s not how it works, I wanted to say. Leave me alone, I wanted to say.
Do it quick, I wanted to say.
End it. Do it, take me.
“I did think I saw you somewhere!” Saw me? There was nobody who- “In any case, that’s wonderful! I live near, deeper in the forest. It’s nice getting a neighbor again.” Did this thing watch me yesterday? This mask and the thing from yesterday had to be different, they were different, but… “In either case, it’s nice to meet you. Could you give me your name?” They felt similar.
I tried without success to take a deep breath. Be polite. Do not anger it. You’re going to die.
But the part of me that was still hypnotized rejoiced at the posibility.
Its. Be its.
Run. You have to run.
“Call me Elijah” I extended my hand, even if my voice was less than a mutter. It frowned. I briefly saw my childhood flash before my eyes. I did not know wether the memory terrified me more than this thing did.
This dread was the same I felt when looking at the stars. The disguise barely covered the immensity beneath it, the immensity it was, it’d swallow me whole at the slightest chance.
“It is very nice to meet you, Elijah,” That voice sounded wrong, it didn’t even know how vocal cords worked — it was a whispered lullaby, but oh so wrong. It sounded even worse with my name on its lips. Its skin was cold and without texture when it touched me, I felt a rush to get away when it pulled me towards it with barely contained force, squishing my hand, feeling it. Inhuman, monstrous in every way I knew, and even in ways I did not. “My name is Pythias.”
-🦴-
“Poor, fragile thing” I whispered, kneeling down to see the creature. “You will bleed out soon, little one. That bite is deep.”
It was indeed too deep. The wolves ran away at my sight, this fluffy thing was still trying to. One of the long ears had gotten thorn off, and the injury bled as quick as its heart beat. Its shaky breath reached me from here, it cried when my bony hand touched its fur.
“It’s alright.” It shivers under my touch, just as that man did this morning. It is awfully similar to him, hurt by something out of its control. I do want to taste him more than this one, warm eyes with pupils like pinpricks. “It’s too late, sweet. There’s nothing anyone can do.”
The red spreads through the grass, it’s absorbed quickly by the earth. It’s still useful.
“Soon you’ll be back to the earth.” Trembling, whimpering. Its legs have spasms now, the vital force is leaving even quicker with my touch. “Stop fighting. You’ll just come back to me. Don’t you want that?” The quick breaths slowed down, so did its heartbeat. I could feel it losing form, its soul mixing into the forest. “Mine. Always mine, little one.”
I lay the bunny’s corpse on the ground when it stops moving, sitting next to it to wait. The forest will go through with what’s next, I’ll make sure only its bones are left after the process. Perhaps flowers over it would be pretty, fitting for such a beautiful animal. Cold. Gone. Mine.
While we wait for the rain to come, I think back at those fearful eyes. He was clearly terrified to be around me, I could hear his heart pounding against his ribs, they’d break if I had gotten any nearer. He’d been just like the dead creature next to me. Usually people make a proper attempt at hiding it, but him…
Too hurt to run from death. Too pale, too hungry. Was fate not kind enough to him? When he shook the priest’s hand as I left, his arms were in bare bones. When I touched him, he was dead cold. His eyes didn’t tell me anything. Dead eyes, like a shark's.
It’s not often I see the shape of the bones while a creature is still alive. Even for this little one, I’ll have to wait a few months before they show. But he looked dead.
No, not dead. He looked like the toys the kids forgot when they ventured into the woods, the beautiful and fragile ones, dressed in tul and lace. His eyes looked the same: Glossy, with a shine that looked artificial. He looked like a doll. A living doll.
His pretty blue eyes were sunken in, yet he somehow still had soft features. Rounded. The grey fur of the dead creature at my feel reminds me of his messy hair, shooting up in places. From behind I’d seen the attempt of fixing the side he’d slept on, it was still flat in a few places. There was an effort, it just wasn’t enough. It had a potential to be as soft as this fur had before the wolves attacked. What happened?
If he died soon; I thought, I’d take his bones for the forest. Unlinke most times, this I didn’t think of as a threat. No, it was more of a promise: I’d care for him in a much more appropiate manner than the rites his kin used. Frutal trees instead of grass, or something ironic enough to appear to have a meaning.
I wanted his remains here, somewhere where I could see him, observe him for as long as I wished without him running away at the first chance. Just as when he was asleep, I’d look at him and remember his features, imagine them contorting into different expressions.
Such potential… While I’d only seen him up close when he was terrified, I wondered how he’d look with a smile. Would his eyes show it? How would his lips move if he did? The thought of a scream crossed my mind, delighting me in the possibilities. If I caused him to scream, how would he look?
How would the intruder in my garden look?
I relished in the fantasy, in the tone of his voice and the way he’d move, the way he’d morph to show fear or extasy. What would surprise him enough for me to see that?
Next, my fantasy morphed to tears. It wasn’t nearly as exhilarating, even if the curiosity was still there. Would it take a lot to make him appear human, like his peers? I wondered...! Would the dark scare him? The nightime, or the beasts that hid there? Perhaps beings such as I would get a reaction out of him.
How would he act if he knew what I was?
If he faced me without a human’s skin on, perhaps even without the bones I puppeteer; if his mind didn’t give out when he questioned my very existence, if he somehow made it through…would that scare him?
If I met him in dreams again, if I met him with the mask on again, and if this time I didn’t leave him alone. My little doll, if he were to pray to anyone who’d listen once more… I’d gladly listen. I'd listen to his melodies, to his voice, as many hopes as he wished if he directed them to me. If he was mine like the people of the church belonged to that nameless god. If he looked at me with hope, if he devoted his entire life…
The bunny lay rigid on the ground, cold. The rain was coming, the clouds were almost over us. I’d been petting the creature, enough of the little strands of hair that stuck to my joints had fallen out to leave a few bald spots.
“Goodnight, little one” I got up to fetch the ear, leaving it near the creature. If it weren’t for the tears, the cold, the rigor mortis, the injuries; overall, the damage… If it weren’t for that, it’d look like it was still alive.
Same with my doll. If it weren’t for his eyes, for his sickly look, for the neglect… No, I did not know if he would look human enough then. But I did know I would rather see him like that. Like the resilient flower instead of the pesky weed.
I wanted to see him clean before seeing him ravished. Build and destroy, then build back up.
Elijah.
And I wondered. Would his name taste like him?
Right now I saw him through the corvid’s eyes, stumbling through that old house and ridding it of the seed that’d grown in his family’s absence. His movements were clumsy, his eyes looked unfocused. I could smell the hunger even from miles away.
How long will it take for me to taste?
Perhaps that will be a good place to start.
The memory of the famished animals I found when I first claimed the forest for myself came to mind. If I were to catch a glance at his naked body, without all those layers his kind insisted on wearing, I was sure I’d find his ribs peeking through the skin and lumps from vertebrae on his back. The bones on his hand were poking out when I shook his hand, and if I hadn’t seen him breathing I’d have thought his flesh was that of a corpse, as it was as cold as one’s.
If I could fix that… The image of red cheeks came to my mind, of plump skin and shiny hair. His eyes were still locked in my mind, two pools of glossy irises, as if they were made of glass. Would he pray to be freed of the pain again? To stop feeling the burning of his stomach’s walls so he could stay still long enough to fall asleep?
How long will it take for me to taste?
It was an unusual request, although for a god who had never been prayed to, I may not know enough to say. His mind was enticing me to go in, to get lost inside him so he’d no longer be alone. As close as I could get. As near as possible, and even then it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy that hunger. I needed to taste him joining me, wasting away and transformed to the point he had no resemblance to what he used to be.
Meant for change. That is what a living thing should be. His body and mind reject the very thing that makes him alive, the very things that make him human. He seems frozen in time, solid as if the last time his state changed was when he breathed for the first time.
How long will it take for me to taste?
Why do you refuse me, Elijah?
Have you been like this since we began this dance?
I could not recall what he’d been.
Willow had been a rosemary last time. Before, she was a bird. Before, she was a pinetree. Before… I could remember each time, ever since she first emerged. I recalled she tended to die young in most of her lives.
I recalled everyone else.
John was almost always a sedentary animal. Evelyn had intercalated between hummingbirds and fish. Sage’s last life was as their family’s cat, and before that they were their own grandfather.
I could list everyone. This bunny was a polypore a few months ago. The flowers in my right were moths, dead in the lamps of the village.
His father was on the way of becoming bones. Then I’d grow on them, just like I did before.
But him?
There were only faint memories of things that weren’t alive. The dust left behind from comets I’d followed eons ago. Sand in the bed of a dry ocean. Stone. Dust. Only one was recent enough to have a chance of being him.
I recall it grew against any odds. The essence of it had layed around the cliff for ages, where the sunlight rarely reached. It popped off the ground unexpectedly, ignoring the circumstances, neglecting to ask for my permisson. A white bloom shining at the bottom of a deep cave, tainting me with the lack of control I could hold over it.
No funghi spores had reached it. Neither did the maggots. Much less small mammals. The seed had been carried by the wind with such silence that I hadn’t noticed until it was too late. And the damn thing was resilient as well.
I blocked the sun first. I made it rain for days, and in the time the clouds weren’t humid enough I kept them blocking the star above. It didn’t faulter. By the time I was done it looked even better than before.
Next I made the rain stop. In the surface the sun scorched everything for months, it caused wildfires and killed my animals from thirst. The ponds dried. The rivers thinned. The ground turned to dust.
And the next time I descended to its refuge, I found the cave cold and humid. The rain had seeped down through the sand above. Far from dying, it was thriving. It twarted any attempt a god had made to snuff it, and how dare it?
How could you do that to me, Elijah?
Where did that fire go? That which drove me mad for many moons, which made me obsess over you. The fire that made me ignore my work in the benefit of destroying a mere weed.
You dared grow on my garden back then, you made me hate you. You made me start an awful winter when that earthquake destroyed you.
How could you?
I’m everything. I’m the very essence of change. I am death and rebirth, I am the decomposing carcasses and the mushrooms that feed on them. I am the sea snow, I am the abyssal creatures thriving under the water.
And you’re human.
...
But. But you're human.
You will be dead again in a few years.
How dare you do this to me again? How dare you give up so easily?
You weren’t supposed to be alive. But I like you enough to keep you alive this time.
If you let me… If I can get close enough…
Will you tell me how, then?
-🦴-
You pray for the same thing as every day today.
Other gods could ignore you. But I’ll take care of my garden.
I’ll take care of the flowers.
And I’ll make sure you cannot leave this time.
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