Author's Note: I don't know how this even started. The line below is from Stephen Crane's The Black Riders and Other Lines, XXXIV.
i, who was, is, will be / kuroro lucifer
This is my pattern of God.
Now this is the God I prefer.
Once, he would've been a damn(ed) good priest. His mouth blesses the words, like how the polished stones of a rosary caress cold skin.
But he is his own god now.
Let the Divine One stay in heaven, make the Devil rot in hell, Kuroro will bend this wretched purgatory to his equilibrium.
No rain ever comes to Meteor City. The land is dry and cracked; no trees, no crops. The only thing this city tills is death. And from this miser's paradise rises the savior.
Nourished with crude oil and anointed with holy smoke, Kuroro takes his guardian by the neck, his small hands quivering with purpose.
Let your blood wash the land fertile.
The snap, the severance, comes with haste. With conviction.
Out of the shadows come his disciples.
Kuroro kisses them each, shares a piece of his own soul. Like a prophet, he tells them stories. What is mine is yours.
And then, very methodically, he cuts down the would-be traitors, the Judases. Feeds them to the dogs.
Kuroro digs the graves of the ones he killed, utters a prayer to send them on their way. Something to keep them company in the coldness of the tomb.
His heartbeat is the requiem, his hands the funeral rite.
Let the dead bury the dead, an old philosopher says to him one day. And let the dead keep it.
Kuroro cannot help but agree, cocking the shotgun in his face, And what are we, but the awaiting dead?
Now, he paints the cross on his forehead to signify the Benediction. The purifying of soul from flesh. I am the holy of holies.
The living fear and the dead revere me, I, the sinner-saint. I, who is, who was, who will be.
Destroyer and maker of the world.