Standard disclaimers apply.

I. Fairytale Living

Once upon a time I had a god. She had soft, white hands and a thin, red smile and eyes the colour of bitterness. She might have been beautiful once, but I was her decay, as she would always tell me, and I could smell the truth on her breath and feel it in the nails curled so hard into my skin on the rare days when she would stumble on me in her misfortune. And it didn't matter, because it was the only time she was close enough for me to wipe at the grief in her eyes and on her cheeks, if she would have let me.

But she never did, because I could never touch her the way she did me. She was a god in her favourite kimono and perfume when he came for dinner, the glitter in her eyes and on her lips across the table, so far away. By the time I was old enough to understand that such favours could never be for me, it was too late to care.

So I died to my god, and my god died to me, and I went to live with a man who I could call 'uncle' if I wanted to, and not feel it a lie. He was no god, but he gave me my first smoke, and I tasted again the familiar tang of bitterness. I have tasted gum and cream and jam and ice since but they don't last, so I don't need them.

Once upon a time I had a cat that wouldn't go away, and I became a god to blind attachment and trust. I thought vaguely that maybe this was what it would have been like, if I had held on to her. But I didn't hate the cat, and I liked animals better anyway, better than the humans and the gods that they created for themselves.

Then I found him one afternoon, and I realised that he needed a god because he was weak. And because his god had failed him, he was lying on the sidewalk in a mess of blood and guts. And maybe humans and animals weren't so different after all, and I knew then, that that would be me, with my blood and guts spilling out of me. And it made me want to laugh – maybe because it didn't matter, since I could die again and again and not hurt. Because when you don't care and when you don't have anything, the only thing you can be born to do is die.

Once upon a time I tested that fate. I learnt how to hold a gun so the recoil wouldn't numb my arm, and learnt to tell one powder from the other. And I played the game, and in the beginning, it was more real in my blood than any challenge a video game could give me. And I thought it would last longer than anything else before, because this time I was winning.

But Komiya died, a jumble of pain and exhaustion and longing in the doorway, and this time I could wipe at the tears on his face, because I knew he would have let me, if he had still been breathing. Sitting there in the doorway I thought about all the promises I could have made and the emotions I could have felt. And the game was over, because being alive here didn't mean that I was living. And that was something Komiya deserved, at least.

Once upon a time I left behind a game with fewer players and a bunch of weeds in a cigarette carton. Nothing else had changed, but I was still alive. And that may not have mattered, because I once had a cat that had been born to die, and humans are not that different from animals.

But I picked up another cat, one that reviled touch and didn't trust as blindly, and didn't need a god, because he wasn't weak. And sometimes I think that maybe this is what it could have been like, if she had loved me. But I don't miss something I never had. Which is why I won't let go of what I have now. He will not die, because he isn't weak. And I will not die yet, because I want that strength for myself.

We'll never get our happily ever after, the two of us. Not the glow and fuzz of a bright, unending future. But there are so many ways to live, and now, in this moment, this is good enough.

-End-