The Hell.

The Hell that is surrounding.

The flames and the stone.

The stone comprised of gnarled flesh.

Petrified.

These twisted bodies, bodies, bodies… …

Looping in and out of the lava.

Forever frozen in their screams.

Forever frozen in their perpetual nightmares.

Red sunrise to red sunset.

A bloody horizon of eternal suffering and agony.

The landscape of landscape itself.

This is the world I walk.

A battered, red-tainted woman.

The daughter of Evil.

With these emblems glowing on my skin—a beacon for the entire galaxy to cower from. A glow for other worlds to fear.

The avatar… …

The chosen one… ..

The deliverer of damnation—The end of all that is and the beginning of all that isn't and the fulcrum in between.

Trigon's seed.

I am.. …

I will be.. ….

Forever and forever more.

Never to die… …

Always to suffer… ..

Eternally-Occasionally bound to witness and re-witness….

My dying friends.

Their blood on my hands.

The juices of the innocent spilling, spilling, spilling.. ….

Like out of a great bird's bony beak and into a pitcher of fire.

I have lost all reserve to cry.

The screaming comes and goes, given the day.. ..month.. …year.. …eon.. … ..

Far too late, I have discovered emotion.

And—suffice to say—I have switched personalities at least three hundred times while walking these plains of pain.

There is no sleep in this ash and smoke.

There is nothing to moisten the eyes.

Nothing but the rumbling sensation of the entire universe, boiling.. .. …boiling.. .. …

As if this is my father's grand harem, and he suffers the world one gigantic orgasm of victory.

From hereon out into the heated breadth of eternity.

I've long neglected trying to come up with a rational explanation for how this ultimate evil could be Trigon's joy.

Everything is consumed as it is.

There is no soul left on the Earth not in torment.

No resource that hasn't been consumed.

No ounce of Mother Earth that has not been raped.

Surely, there are other universes for him to conquer—But when would such a grand plan go into effect?

Or has this entire dimension—This universe already been concerned?

At what point would eternity tire out for him and make him spread elsewhere?

Or has he already?

I cannot tell.

I am a shrouded slave under the forever-stretching ceiling of red rage and fury.

The cosmos consume me.

His red eyes.. .. ..everywhere.. … .everywhere… .. ..everywhere.. … ..

I always knew.

Yes.. ….

Yes… .. .. …

I had always known… ….

From a little girl, I had known.

As a courage teenager, I had known.

As a struggling woman, I had known.

And as a battered soul, I now know.

From birth to perpetual 'death'.

From my mother's womb to my father's jaw.

This.. ….

All of this.. ….

Everything I see—the stone agony and billowing redness.

Everything I hear—the rumbling hell and muted screams.

This is all me.

I am all of it.

I exist.. …I am.. ….I live.. …I die… …

And everything suffers for it.

And everything that has ever been has ceased to be.

Everything I knew or ignored.

Everyone I met or missed.

The few I touched… …

The many more I never talked to… ..

The Titans.. …

The citizens.. …

The villains.. .. …

Every single one of them were always, are always, and shall always be this indivisible whole.

This tortured, wrapped-up ball of stone.

This screaming orb of truth—that I was a curse upon them from the very day I dared to persist in living.

Everything the Temple of Azar taught me for.

Everything the Titans trained me for.

All that my years of lingering had stretched me for.

It has always been, always is, and will always be this.

This inescapable essence.

This me.

And the me boils.

And the me burns.

And the me strings helpless souls through eons, upon eons of churning nightmares.

Their agonized energies screaming down the funnels of life into my father's churning heart.

And he feeds on that very same torture that never quenches.

For he is eternal in me.. …as I am eternally bound by him.

And for such, I persist.

Just as I always have.

Living without living.

Dying without dying.

This wasteland.. … …

This sulfuric continent…. ..

This forever now….

"Was it all j-just a glimpse?"

Dry lips.

Ashen air.

Feet shuffle.

Feet kick the thousandth stone of many thousand little stones into the lava rivers around me.

".. .. …the.. ….the microcosmic spectacle.. … …of true life?"

The four-eyed banshees.

The crumbling rock echoing the groans of my father.

The forever fumes.

"N-Nightwing.. … …R-Robin.. …."

Ember dust.

Demon claws on the rocks, rocks, rocks….

"Cyborg.. …… …Starfire.. .. …"

Burning streams.

Steam and ash and steam and ash…

".. ….Beast Boy.. … …. … … …. .. … .. …T-Terra… .. .. …"

I turn my dry head.

I gaze with drier eyes at the loops and arches and mountains of screaming stone.

Granite bodies.

Howling, marble mouths.

".. .. … ..w-will I ever f-find you in all this.. … ..?"

Flapping wings overhead.

Leather and blood.

Fangs.

And gone again.

".. … … …will it ever matter.. … .. ..?"

I have no answer to this.

Just like I have had no answer to it the previous million times I habitually spoke it out loud.

No answer… …--save for what is obvious.

I am here.. …

Forever here.. ….

But this has always been true.

And this has always been… ..

… …as I has always been.

And as such.. …

And as such, the torment was not torment alone.

For there was.. .. …true warmth sharing a piece of that essence.

There was joy to be had in torment.. … ..

There was peace to be had in chaos.. .. …

If even for the briefest of time, my damned existence was blessed--

And that time is only as brief as I remember it to be.

Remember it to be.. .. …

Do we truly remember things?

Or do we live them?

There is no backwards.

There is no forwards.

Time has had no bearing on my life, for one way or another my father still has consumed me.

He may have taunted and teased me beforehand with the battles he 'lost'.. …

But his will was made manifest as soon as I was born.

And as such—there was even joy to be had in his will.

And there is joy yet to be had in this nightmare.

Not so much 'joy'—but rather an extension of that which has always been.

For time is nothing, but even if it was something—Then joy beyond the constraints of the future is no more than hope.

And I.. …

I have always had hope.. …

Yes… ….yes……

'Hope' is something I have always had, and always will have.

For as much as torment is something I have always had, and always will have.

Hell would not be Hell without 'hope'.

My face tightens.

In the fumes and the heat of my father's playground… …

I smile…

I hope.. ..

And I hope.. …

And I hope.. … …

And…oh… ..

How beautiful that hope is.. …

I shut my eyes.

Through the sulfuric waves, I spread my tortured arms out and…

Glide across the frozen, screaming mouths.

The vibrating intestinal agony gurgling around me.

Drifting.. …

Falling back…. …

Collapsing within myself….

This woman.

This girl.

This child.

This infant.

This seed….

A drop of blood.

A blossoming rose.

Thorned, yes, but—

--warm with every, every, every trickle.

"F-Friends.. … … …"

I am there.. …

I am there… … .. ….


I am there… .. … … ….