A/N: Inspired by the song "Riot", by Three Days Grace.
Hell was a delicious nightmare that I often found irresistible. The night it descended on Earth was my only night worth living.
They called us devil worshipers. We related to the inferno below more than the breath of heaven above and answered to no god. In the streets mothers would turn their children away from us. In school we were left alone in fear of a brutal retaliation. We were famous for that, I suppose – Eric especially. His notorious temper spurred intense flashes of screeching anger that were, at times, impossible to control. Meanwhile, I ripped the world to shreds through searing heartbreak. My frustration was far quieter, but just as cruel. We destroyed and rebuilt to our own accord. For those reasons, priests and police alike ruffled at mention of us. We were united in the darkest of times, an eclipse that we could not escape. However, we had no intent in searching for the treacherous moon. Instead of shuffling into exile with our wrists bound by handcuffs and rosary beads, we wore our scarlet letters in pride. We grew fond of our curse.
It was the midst of late February's nocturnal arctic when the fuse was lit. The first spark barely caught, drenched by a frozen blast of air. He quickly shut the window, though, and returned to the bottle seated between us. We fueled the fire as we spat and cursed and recited prayers to Abaddon in the sanctuary of his basement. By the first stroke of eleven PM, our nonsensical hearts were pumping malice into our veins until they fizzed like soda straws. By thirty after, the alcohol had emptied all of its venom and new ideas into our heads. We thirsted for far more than tequila at that point.
There were others – our friend Kyle was of improper decent – but none were quite as corrupt as Eric. One looked from his glazed honey eyes and I understood. We had been robbed and cast into these clawing shadow lands. We had lost everything to wretched autocrats, who all but ignored our shaken cries. After wordlessly issuing orders, my villain and I rose from the cold decay. We took to the dark streets and lit up the skies, calling for our persecuted brothers to raise their voices. Our shackles clattered to the ground as we ravaged through the worldly possessions of our tormentors.
In a matter of hours, we had the asylum on its knees. We had grown into an unstoppable force of blighted nature, saturated with thick alcohol and poisoned will. Eric and I were the ones who were truly responsible for such a catastrophic event; while others hesitated, we charged headlong into the battle. Alone, our offense was weak-kneed, but we were not without help. Throngs of recluse mercenaries joined our victory march, nameless soldiers in this war. Eric and I welcomed them. We amassed and conquered in a cancerous tidal wave. Different battalions constructed to their own sick liking. We took no notice to what our fellow pariahs accomplished. We only cared to annihilate what threatened to annihilate us. And, as our flames devoured the town, people wondered why. I should think we made it quite obvious. Two sinners, fed up with scourging God's house, had suffered in the dogged bite of chaste folk. We refused to take it anymore. Like demented madmen – that they saw us any differently – we stormed the streets with murder on our minds. The dark misery entwining our souls was an ugly thing to expose; nevertheless, we made sure that their consciences were choking in wrecks of black debris before that fateful night ended. I can safely say we enjoyed it, too. They went down, fading eyes tormented and sick with loss, while Eric and I laughed in sadistic delight. Positively high off their pain, we greedily grew fat from the pandemonium.
My eyes, the color of water, glowed with the fires we had birthed. Towers of flame barreled toward the velvet sky. Their starving tongues kissed the stars. With each passing minute, though, it became not a sky, but a scarlet rampart aglow with the bed of malicious devastation below. Eric was always one far for the limelight. While I worked to reach critical mass and wreck white-hot havoc, he embellished his art with a rogue smile that would creep out on his voracious lips whenever the amoral aesthete was faced with victory. For each dilapidated neighborhood, for every traumatized heart, he made sure to dust the death with pretty teardrops of glass. I wanted destruction. He wanted fame. Alone, they're but dying diseases scoring for hosts. Joined, however, and they became a tempest's frenzied roar. And, all things considering, their final work together turned out a stunning result.
The others thought it would be easier to just bleed us away. So we brought down the wrath of Lucifer on that town. They had no one to blame but themselves. Didn't their mothers ever teach them not to temper with Pandora's Box?
Before we even heard the siren's warning screech, Eric and I were well aware of what would become of us. So, trolling down the outermost road, we trudged our buzzing bodies across cool earth with the burning township at our backs. Our battered toes marveled at the alien dampness while our mouths bathed in a similar fashion, only in the citrus wetness of his frosted tequila bottle. We were not without assistance. With the poison seeping into our porous cores, it would be much easier to absorb the impending downfall.
Then that unmistakable sound pierced the air behind us. Exchanging final malevolent stares, we faced the approaching headlights. Fully illuminated, I imagine we looked like ragged soldiers rampant with dark passion in our torn and bloodied clothes, true wide-eyed horrors to the officer behind the wheel. Collectively, though, we waited in the whitewash, infidels who had all but crushed the cross over this once holy land.
And the cruelest irony of all is, some lost Sunday ago, I met Eric at church.
"Let's start a riot…"