Mwahaha. ANGST! Beautiful angst!
"Death is not the worst that can happen to man."
Plato, Laws
My mind's eyes were taken back into inside the room. Sheogorath was slowly letting me go for his own particular reasons. I felt my mind and thoughts slide. I felt his touch on my mind loosen. Finally, my mind became my own again. He had me in his gentle embrace. I looked up into his eyes. He was staring back down at me. His facial expression went from being sharp to gentle and soft. "I have more to show, but not here. There is… something else that I have. Let us make haste about it now," he informed me warmly. After being inside his head, although as short it was, I felt horribly cold, both literally and figuratively. I felt frigid from the inside out. I began shivering as he ushered me out the room.
He was leading me down the hallway. His pace was quite quickened. I followed him with not much ease. Why was he in such a hurry? We turned a left corner, and he opened a door for me. He slid inside first. I ambled in afterwards, not knowing what to expect. The room was impossibly large and well-lit. There was a pool in the center of the room. The pool was not filled up very much, or it was very deep, because I could see no water. The walls were beige. Sheogorath squeezed my shoulder. "No, Walter, please do not go yet," he begged of me in a feeble voice. I turned towards him, and interrogated, "Why?" He sighed, and lowered his head. My countenance was tense and frosty. "Better not for me to speak it," he replied to me with an ashamed tone in his soft voice.
What happened next caught me by surprise. My eyes grew wide in terror. Sheogorath pushed me forcefully, though obviously reluctantly, into the arena. My back splashed painfully against water. I couldn't screamed, but I wanted to. I was far too shocked to do much of anything. He went to the side I was nearest to and forced my head under. I could take no more. My arms flailed futilely. I clawed at his hands, trying to pry them from my head, with no avail. How…how did he know? Under the crystalline water, I screamed, but was not heard. I wanted to cry. My air was being depleted very quickly in my panic, and this only frightened me more.
It seemed like this went on for several minutes. Right when I felt like I was slipping out of consciousness, he pulled me up. I gasped for air. I was laying, dazed, on firm ground. I coughed for several minutes, while Sheogorath stared at me. He was sitting cross-legged, with such an awful look in his eyes. His expression was bewildered and apologetic. When I came to my senses, I glared at him. "What the hell, Sheogorath?" I asked petulantly. I crawled onto my haunches to sit in front of him. I was close enough to kiss him, and that was hardly what I had in mind. I wanted to punch him, but at the same time I wanted to break down and sob. Sheogorath poignantly aimed his gaze into my eyes.
"Sorry, but I had to, Walter. Please understand why I did it," he replied in a dismal voice, "I did not mean you any harm. I had good intentions for it. I want you to understand pain. Deception can be so cruel, eh? You think you are impregnable. But, that illusion was killed. Oh, how so easily it is!" I expected him to laugh insanely, but he didn't. His complexion looked as if it had turned ashy. His face had paled a bit. I wanted to look away, because his skin was so pasty now that he looked like a corpse. His lips were the only color in his face. They were a gaudy rose pink.
I sighed, and looked into his vibrant eyes. Sheogorath looked on the verge of either stomping out of the room, crying, or destroying everything around him. I embraced him, and looked at the environment behind him. The room was tall was well as wide and long. Above the door was something…odd. A body was pinned to the wall, and its blood was dripping onto the floor. The body was naked, except for a loincloth, and its head was facing downwards. Now, I wouldn't let Sheogorath go for my life, but my instincts were firmly urging me to. As if the body could hear my thoughts, it raised its head. The face was skinless. Its horrendous eyes stared at me coldly. They were a blank, yet vivid, green. The body emitted a weak voice, "Help me." Sheogorath took notice to my awe. "What is the damn bother about?" he asked me in such a sad voice. I shook my head, and let him go so I could look into his eyes. "There's a body up there," I said, indicating above the door. Sheogorath looked over there for a brief second, then looked back at me. He replied to me in an exasperated voice, "Is this a joke, because there's naught?" My expression dropped from awe to plain disbelief. I wouldn't argue.
I scowled. He did as well, and I leaned towards him. I touched his face and found it to be very cold. I held and squeezed his hands. My body began tingling with excitement. My reactions were getting stranger and stranger to me, but they were right. I kissed his lips. "Please," I pleaded, "show me more." Sheogorath nodded gracefully. He looked into my eyes and painfully returned me into the shelter of his head.
The room through his eyes was not the same as my perception. There was no body nailed to the wall. The walls were very black and decayed. There were even some parts on the wall that looked like writhing flesh. The images began to blur. I was shown his memories again. He was starting from a later age. I'd say it was in his former life's mid to late adolescence. Wow. He was really beginning to resemble what he would look like as an adult. He was quite tall, almost his full-grown height. The young man was starting to grow tufts of facial hair. He was standing in a field, wearing a drab blue robe. Off to his side in his hands was a book. It was broad daylight, and that made his hair very fiery. He sat down in the grass, and began reading.
He extended one of his arms and propped it up on one of his knees. That hand opened, and a flame had appeared in the middle of it. The young Sheogorath was concentrating very hard on his book. The flame grew slightly larger. Its intensity increased. The fire turned a bright blue, and then began to take on a purple tint. A boy of similar age, though smaller and brunette, was moving in towards him. This took Sheogorath's attention away from the book and his magic. The flame vanished, and Sheogorath looked very peeved about that. "What do you want?" he asked in a brooding voice. The boy, not standing too far from him, answered.
"Your father…" the boy began to inform Sheogorath, but hesitated. Sheogorath's countenance firmed into displeasure. "Go on," he growled at him, not at all pleased that his attention was being taken away from his precious magic. The boy looked terrified. "Sheogorath, your father… your father was killed today," he said. His brown eyes were wide. Sheogorath's green eyes widened. He replied, "You can't be serious." He looked damned perturbed. The boy sighed, and indicated he wanted Sheogorath to follow him. "Here," he declared jadedly to Sheogorath, "follow me."
Sheogorath followed him into the village. There was a big congregation in the middle of the street. The boy let Sheogorath go his own way. The living Sheogorath stomped through the crowd to see what was going on.
In the middle of the crowd, was his old adoptive father. A knife had been plunged deeply into his chest. The gray robe the dead man wore was stained heavily with blood. Sheogorath's mouth was wide open, as were his eyes. One of the lord's men laid a hand on his shoulder. "The man who killed him is in custody," the guard informed him sympathetically. Sheogorath nodded. He looked lugubrious, and his features seemed to darken. Then, the image faded out.
We came into the young Sheogorath laying down at home, staring at the ceiling. His eyes were full of tears. "Why?" the now very pained Sheogorath asked, "What did I do?" He turned and laid on his side. He began sobbing loudly, alone. His blue robe was dirtied. I had to bury him myself, Sheogorath's mind-voice told me forlornly, No one at all would dare help me. If I had my face, I would have frowned. My own mind-voice replied, That's not right. It isn't, is it now, my dear? he replied. His question wasn't meant to be answered, but I knew the answer.
There was nothing right in the way he was treated. It was an iniquity! I couldn't believe it. Sheogorath called himself a social injustice, yet the treatment he received was the true social injustice. He was blaming this all on himself. I've heard that frequently victims of large crimes do this to themselves. I guess it makes sense. The only way he could justify it in his mind was if he was at fault. He wanted things to happen for a reason, that's all.
No, there was nothing right in it; the dead should have buried the dead.
