I remember the feeling. It was like I was dying.
The bones in my back, cracking and breaking voluntarily, transforming. It tore through my skin, just below my shoulders. They grew out as I bled out, wings stretching out and becoming bigger and wider.
All I could do was scream from pain and clutch onto the nearby tree's trunk as everything grew outwards - wings, horns, fangs, and even my fingernails.
It was all painful, unimaginable and excruciating pain. It never went away. With my nails sharpened out and blackened to their tip, I left scratches on the bark of the tree, my body becoming more weak as I drooped closer and closer to the ground, my pants all muddy from the mud of the forest dirt and river.
Above me, through the trees' crooked branches was that red illuminant moon that was all too familiar. It seemed to only get more visible as my transformation became more and more.
Finally, I had dropped down on my hands and knees with my head bowed, waiting for it all to be over. The overwhelming pain struck me so suddenly I couldn't help but cry, wishing it didn't hurt so bad as it did.
That's when I realized he was still there, watching it all. From behind me, his voice came in slowly and faintly. He stepped forward with hesitation and the sticks and leaves crunched underneath him. "Marco? Are you... okay?"
I couldn't answer. I was too distracted staring down at my hands in shock. The tips of my fingers were faded to black with sharp claws yet my hands still trembled unsteadily.
"Marco?" His voice got quieter as if my unresponsive behavior was frightening him.
I couldn't answer still. The world around me was reaching a deadly hot temperature and sweat began to creep onto my face. The heat of the pain and overwhelming feeling took over my stomach and made my head spin with hazy vision. Before I knew it, it rose up and I covered my mouth, hoping it wouldn't come.
I got up quickly, despite my legs shaking and wavering underneath me. I got up, hiding behind a tree and crouching over when it all come up. I felt my body becoming hotter by the second and when I threw up, my body shook as if I had a fever. The wings I carried behind me were too heavy for me to even stand so instead I fell back on my knees in the mud of the forest, trying to catch my breath.
"What..." I tried to say but I still didn't give my lungs time to steady themselves. I tried again this time, powering through my words though they were coming out forced. "What is happening to me?"
Tom took me off the ground, panicking as he did. "Oh, man. This isn't good." He said with no calmness in his voice. He took my arm and hung it over his shoulder to support me. "We need to go. Now."
In a flash of flames, he transported us to the Underworld, a place where the demons live, a place I thought I'd never have to see again. I fell forward, my arm drooping off of him as I was losing my grip. As I hit the rock ground with a thud, Tom winced. I wasn't able to stop myself and the pain that slashed through me when I did made me yelp out with a groan.
Tom came to my side and sat me up against a wall but every move I made made the wings behind me more intensely painful. My chest rose in and out rapidly as I couldn't keep my breathing at a normal rate. My head dropped down, my skull feeling like it was filled with metal. "You - you have to go back." I told him.
He looked at me like a deer in the headlights. "What? Why?"
My temper had flared and I grabbed his shirt collar, tugging him into me. A demon voice came out instead of my own as I spoke, startling Tom. "You have to go back!" I shouted in a long octave.
Tom pulled away from me as I let go of my shirt, seeing the terror in all three of his eyes. "No. I'm sorry. I can't." His sympathetic voice muttered. "Star's - gone! It's too late."
I still don't know why I said it, but I did. I lifted my head and my eyes were stern. "Tom?" He turned back to meet my face and was surprised when I was calm and composed. "Please... I don't want to remember this."
"Marco... what are you saying?"
"You can erase minds, right?" The question came out dry and tasteless.
"No." He said at last. "I-I can't do that to you."
"Please!" I wailed. "Take them all away! I don't want to remember any of it!" I felt tears coming down my face as Tom turned his back on me, unable to watch. "Please?" It came out as a desperate whisper.
He turned back around, his face full of grief. He nodded slowly.
"Okay." He brought his hand up to my eyes, fire igniting in the palm of it, orange and yellow and a blend of red. Soon, the swirls began to come together, making my mind tired and blank. The first thing I forgot was that night, the most recent of my memories. Next, it was her.
Memories disappeared from my brain just as they never even existed at all. But as they did, my heart ached, watching every one of the memories, from most recent to the far ones. I began to feel scared. I was watching the memories, each and every one, right before they left me.
"Nononono!" I cried out to myself in my head, the most precious of our memories leaving me. They flashed through me before vanishing. I tried to mentally reach out and hang onto them, one after the other, like photographs, trying to catch them frantically before they were lost to the wind, forgotten forever.
My most precious memories, all of them. Gone. All down to the last memory of her, the first day we ever met. It was the most precious of them all. Seeing it go so easily, I felt the tears well up more, shattering my heart.
"Thanks for showing me around, Safe Kid!" She had boomed in my ears while skipping joyously in front of me like a little kid would. In her hand, she had been chewing on her wand also like a little kid would, out of habit.
"Goodbye, Star..."
Even as I look back on it now, I don't know why I asked him to do it. I was so stupid, so idiotic. Why would I ever want to forget about the best moments of my entire life? Why? All for what? Just so I didn't have to deal with the pain of remembering her? The pain of remembering what I did?
I rather live with the pain of remembering than the pain of forgetting.
What an idiot I was to want to forget.