He could hear the wind moaning and groaning as he passed through the streets, his feet collecting mud as he stepped into the very many water puddles, the neon lights reflected in them, swiveling and becoming long yellow snakes that wished to devour his foot. He could still taste the sea's salty breath as he walked on by, the sea dragon not giving him a moment's break. He could still feel the dragon's saliva in his mouth, as he spat out the salt, as he regretted to think of committing suicide on this special day, the day where he became a god, the day where he became free, free from the claws and shackles of society and the people around him that beckoned him to be like everyone else in the world, the deaf dumb and blind and useless to the world's history.
If he became a god, he could change history. He could make all these people no longer blind deaf and dumb. He could make the world into a brighter, cheerier place, without the glums and dirt and fragility that Seattle had often, the city that created grunge and goldenrods and the sea piers. He thought he could change Seattle to a city he could love even more with his brother, his brother, who art thou was in heaven, as soon he would be with him, finishing the story he held in his arms, living with him back in his parent's house watching TV and discussing how television today was vile and how with the touch of his brother he would make it all better. The touch of brilliance, the touch of civility and the touch of sanity, the touch of ice in an otherwise chaotic world that ran on too hot and full of breath and full of screams and bile. If the whole television world could take lithium to cure their ailing heads that made them think that money was more important than touching the lives like Anansi did with his spider webs of truths and tales, then maybe Sonic would actually watch television. Maybe he wouldn't beg his mother to turn it off, when she wanted to watch what the housewives were doing with their daily drama, their daily wretchedness that made them full of money but no heart and no brain that made them make sense in a world that used to been full of sense.
And Sonic could make it have sense again. Make the rich suffer. Make the poor, goodhearted people rich in both money and heart. With the magic pen that the raven god now had in his beak, he could make everything better again with his touch of sanity, his lithium touch, the sprinkling of salt in a land dried of it. Everyone would have logical answers, no one would no longer be tempted by their emotions as strong as they could be, which meant no more murder, no more thievery, no more hurt words and hurt actions and hurt voices that would beckon to him as he would listen to their prayers, their small little whispers as they told him of every problem and of every thing their emotions pained them to do, to sin and to indulge and punish, he could stop all that as his hands and voice and eyes would become mighty, and he could shake the heavens and shake the entire city of Seattle, shake the entire world if he had to, and he could make the world a free, sane-ridden world where only anything made sense and where there was no money and no laws, because they didn't need any. A world that utilitarians wished to make, but never could achieve their goal, until he signed his name in the contract.
He just needed to find that pen. He just needed to find that raven god, wherever he could possibly be hiding in the shadows.
People passed him by, without so much as a notice or care. He was used to being invisible in this world. He was used to being gray and fitting in the dull colors that no one's vivid eyes could see as much as they could try to care to. Even with his family he never was paid much attention, it was always Wind, his brother who could barely lift a single arm as his nose was threaded with mucus and he couldn't breathe, his lungs ridden of disease and decay. He never could stay in school often as he was so sick he often couldn't pay attention in his classes, and he told all of his teachers that his ultimate wish was to be granted as much time as he would be allowed by God to write his novels, to publish them and get his views and his vision out there in the world, to let them know of how much a storyteller with his hands and brain aflare as he struggled to keep up with his thoughts on the ravens and the people who were so close to death and they didn't know it, and he took so much care and pride in his novel that he thought by the end of it he would become a rich writer, one with health insurance, one who could've had the lung transplant operated on him if only he had a little bit more dough. But the pigs said no, as he only had a dollar and thirty cents gathered from selling his stories for five cents, his short five hundred word stories that he expected would grip the world as much as money and reality television did. But he only managed to sell a few copies (mostly to his relatives) and he never published his first novel, even if he was given all the time without school and chores to complete his works. That was how much time was constantly pulling against him. He was dead before he knew it, and he couldn't believe it when it happened. He refused to believe it even, until he could feel his brother's heart stop beating. His sickly heart. How it longed to beat a strong pulse like his brother's, who doctors referred as "healthy as a clam" (if clams were even that healthy in the first place with their dirty, sickly tongues that was attached to their entire face).
It seemed like he wished he could trade lives with his brother. At least he had something going for him. His stories. While he simply had high school and college, with nothing to work for except maybe a girlfriend he never would truly love and a couple of kids who he never wanted to raise in the first place simply because the gods of the media told him to do so.
Those were the first gods he was going to defeat while he was one too he thought. Make television nearly nonexistent until he could fix it again. Make radio only static. Make music only mumblings and only sickened murmurs. Make the news only of things that everyone already knew. The mundane, the trivial. Make the media so boring that no one would care to listen to it anymore. That no one would listen to their folklore, and they would be as dead as his brother's chances at getting another transplant.
He could smell the frying of meat as he passed a restaurant called Cafe Paloma as he walked across the near end of Yesterway Street. The sky was gray, as gray as his thoughts, as gray as he was according to all the people who lived in this city, and he could see the few slits of ice falling down his cheek as it licked him and made it drip from him like a tear, like a barrage of frozen arrows as the snow turned into sleet, and it was frigid. It felt like petrified knives to his skin, and he wished now that he had a coat with him, as the street lights could not warm him up as loud and as bright as they were, as fiery as the reds were and as golden and warm as the yellows promised to be, and he could not see a single man or woman that bothered to ask him if they wanted him to hitch a ride with him in search of finding the raven god that took a celestial pen, the people as blind and as deaf and as dumb as they were to not have a face, to be black silhouettes against the concrete and against the steel and glass of their cars. They only smoked their cigarettes, listened to their rap music that was much louder than his voice could ever hope to be, and they laughed and talked away the night without so much of the hedgehog who wanted to become god and could become a god, nearly died today on February 12th, 2012, almost the same date as his brother. Which would've been as sad and as unfortunate as his unfinished novels were.
As he stepped in more frozen puddles, his feet and heart and body shivering (his heart shuddering), the silhouettes of the lights became long strings of yellow, long glowing snakes that slithered from the puddle into the crevices of the concrete. LED lights are mostly red and yellow and green, and as flashy as the radiant blue moon that peeked overhead, as it reminded him of the crow god's eyes when he stared at them when they were about to sign the deal, the milky eyes flashed a shimmering green for as what seemed to be as small as milliseconds, and throughout the canvas of the red yellow and green and blue he could see the glint of clear starlike white tongue, pointed and bloodied and with a flickering soft milky mincemeat that licked the air of the street. An alive tendril known as the snake that was crawling throughout the city gutters and the city pipes and alleyways, he was looking for someone as his victim, someone to devour with his body like rubber that could crease and fold when eating things bigger than itself, and the serpent hissed with its long white tongue and it bared its fangs and struck, the hedgehog dropping his brother's novel onto the wet slick ground and his face stinging as it sunk its fangs into him, through his skin and blood.
He kicked and flailed and yelled, trying to get the snake off of him, off the side of his face as its white tongue became pink as it licked off the blood that dripped from his cheeks, seeing what his blood tasted like, to see if he would be a suitable meal as everyone's blood tasted different to this snake. Some blood tasted sweet, some blood tasted like rotten pig meat, some tasted like ambrosia, like Sonic's did.
The snake flung his head back, as Sonic touched the side of his face, warm and oozing with both his life and the snake's saliva. He hoped it wasn't poisonous, and he hoped he wouldn't die (or so he thought at that moment and time), and he never asked what would a snake be doing in Seattle, attacking him relentlessly when snakes were supposedly afraid of anything bigger than itself. As he glanced at it's bobbing head and its purple eyes that were small slits from the thinnest knife, the snake was decorated with yellow and blue and red feathers that shined like its own skin was made from gems from the streetlights, and large wide wings that were as white like the stars in the night sky, and his tongue, so pink from drinking his blood, he thought it looked almost like a newborn baby peeking from his mouth.
And he wondered why such a snake, if one existed outside of myths, was attacking him this night, on February 12th, 2012, especially when such a creature would've been dead in folklore itself, the only ones believing it existed were the Aztecs who died hundreds of years ago.
He met all kinds of strange things on this night. His brother dying, being eaten by a sea dragon, almost becoming a god himself, and being attacked by the ruler of the Aztecs and their gods, Quetzalcoatl.
It hissed vehemently, its silver fangs glinted in the golden lights, as it lunged straight towards him, a flash of colorful feathers and slits of teeth and slits of eyes, as it struck back with its fangs, sinking into his arm, blood gashing through it. He stifled a scream, as if the battle must be kept secret to the rest of the world, and he looked at the book that was lying alone on the city lights, still fashioned out of black and plastic, the story of the raven and the apocalyptic world that his brother created. And he wondered if this snake would let him finish the story before he died, before he would wrap him up with his heavy, feathery body and choke him black and blue and devour his entire body, fur and bones and blood and all. He wondered if that fairy would come and give him a new pen and he could sign on and be able to fight back. These gods now had a vendetta against him, both the raven god and Quetzalcoatl, and he wondered what happened that made them suddenly hate him. He used to have such an ordinary life, with a not so ordinary brother, but he lived his life as restricted and as boring as it could be before all these gods suddenly wanted him dead. It was too much excitement for him to handle, too much of his blood being shed just to live.
And yet, he thought, he enjoyed it. He enjoyed being near death. Like the children playing with belts and their soft pale hands as they constricted their neck just to get a little high, called the Choking Game. He thought it was a little like that.
The blood that tasted of ambrosia was now Quetzal's as he lapped it up with great luxury and slithered around his body, as Sonic counted more of the seconds, the minutes he had before he would die, the second time he found himself facing death, and he thought he was just as sick as his brother, seeing the man with the great black cloak and his body made of bones carrying a giant scythe as much as he did.
But he realized he faced him everyday. His brother, the one whose lungs were always carried with the virus that counted down the very seconds he would be spending on this frail and mortal Earth.
He felt cold. He felt the sleet and the icy blue-blooded body of the serpent, and the last thought he would have in his head was that he wished he was back home, in a warm blanket, sleeping in his bed as he thought over who Anansi was and the message of his stories he made with silk and string.
I could be back home right now…
Reading those damn stories of his…
And forgetting the whole thing with that fairy ever happened…
And just living a life where I'm just as restrained as a cow on a ranch, waiting for my perfect moment to be dead along with the rest of these blind deaf and dumb folks…
I would just be as dead as they were, waiting for their boring lives to end…
He wanted to close his eyes and wish this all away, the boring tinge of his life that stained him, the hatred of the gods as they tried to slay him. He wanted it all gone, and he wondered why he had to exist to be cursed with both.
If only that damn pen would show up and sign me out of this shit…
There was a flare of white lights as they whistled in the air and he could hear a loud boom cracking in his ears as the snake suddenly let go of his bloodied body and hissed again, a hiss not of hate and hunger, but confusion. Sonic could immediately feel the weight of a hundred pounds no longer pressing against his chest, and he breathed in all the air he could, gasping full meals of oxygen that he was deprived from when the snake decided that he had to die today. He could feel more of the flares and explosions near him, sounding like a mischievous kid playing with fireworks and he was using them against the god. As he glanced up at the sky he could see the silhouette of a black bird blasting down the white streams of light, its blue eyes looking down on him, cautiously but yet curiously, and he felt an even stranger moment creep up on him, the moment that the gods were playing with him, as if they were too bored to deal with their prayers and sacrifices and they decided to play on some miserable blue hedgehog who they all thought was amusing in his own pathetic way.
If only he had the abilities of a god, otherwise he would show them all how "pathetic" he really was. No one needed to laugh at him, even after he sobbed about Wind. Even if he nearly succumbed to his suicide. He didn't need the chuckles and hee-haws of men who were better than most of these humans in this world to prove he really was pathetic and weak. When he would become a god, he would be so strong that he could wipe out this snake that decided he was a suitable victim with one touch of his finger. One touch, and his heart would explode in a burst of black blood dripping on their chest. With one tap of his foot he could create an earthquake that would send all these gods back to the places they really belonged; to Hell, where all the black demonic creatures that seeped of bile and black blood thrived. He would all make them suffer for choosing him, out of all of the people in the world who probably needed to suffer from the wraths of the gods, to bully and stab and pick and eat, and he would make even the gods pray for him to not look at them with his green, angelic eyes and pierce them with lightning.
The crow flapped his wings that looked even black in the light, appearing as dark as ink, as dark as shadows, as the creature soon formed into something larger, one that looked a lot like him, with his quills that bled of red and his eyes that were no longer blue but as red as the blood on Sonic's arm and face, his fur as black as the crow's feathers, and he could see a tuft of white fur on his chest. A much more different hedgehog than him, both in demeanor and appearance. He wore a hood with a metallic crow's head on top, with eyes made of sapphire and its beak and face made of tin and iron, rusty as if it lived on for so many years, even throughout the Middle Ages, with his wings that were chiseled with a touch of orange decay.
He looked at him briefly, hiding his face in the mask as his bloodied eyes turned to water, and he held his gun towards the snake who soon transformed into a green alligator, one without feathers and the touch of a god, actually looking about as young as 17 and looked as harmless as a snail near a saltshaker. The necklace he held aloft was decorated with feathers that looked from some extravagant bird from a far-off country with a snake's fang in the middle, as piercing and as dangerous as it was when it pierced through Sonic's skin.
After what seemed to be hours of petrifying silence, the crow god spoke, and his voice was low, growling and brimming with anger and hate. Like he assumed most black and red hedgehogs would sound like (the colors of hate and pain), especially ones that were raven gods.
"According to Chip's contract, if you were stupid enough to sign it, it says that you can't attack a mortal simply because you're hungry, even if you haven't eaten anything in days. If you want to have a meal, actually get a job and pay for food yourself. Don't eat someone who did nothing to you, else Chip has the right to terminate you. And he probably wouldn't even mind if I killed you, right now, standing in this very spot without so much as a warning or the sound of my feet moving through the granite. Are we on even terms? Are you going to leave this hedgehog alone? If not, I'll blast your head open so fast you won't even have time to remember how good his blood tasted."
"Why do you care, Yehl?" he asked, wiping his mouth of blood. "I'm starving to death. No one wants to hire me; no one wants to even bother giving me a piece of their bread. They just all care about themselves, not even caring if I die on the streets today or tomorrow. So I needed to kill someone who didn't matter, so I could get something in my stomach. No one is going to notice, right?"
"Maybe if you actually paid attention to people's lives, of course someone is going to notice, because his brother just died today, and do you know who his brother was, idiot? He was a god too. Anansi. But of course you don't pay attention; you just care about getting something to eat. You want something so bad that you actually were going to kill a mortal in cold blood? Gods can punish, but they cannot kill another mortal. You better make a deal with Chip that he won't take away your powers; otherwise you won't be a god much longer. No one will ever hear of a feathered snake named Quetzalcoatl ever again, and maybe that's a good thing, as all the Aztecs were bloody savages who sacrificed their own to give to their gods. And you would kill your own to sacrifice him to you. How typical."
He glanced at the hedgehog's blood as it stained his fingers, thinking he should lick them like ketchup, but he didn't want to anger the god further. Yehl was a god that was far stronger than him, one with a lot more folklore surrounding him. No one cared about the Aztecs these days. Neither did anyone with the Indians, but there were still people who tried to spread the culture for them to understand their race, but Aztecs were all killed off a long time ago. None of their blood remained. Therefore, it made him weaker.
There was no point in battling a fight you couldn't win, especially to a much stronger god like him. There were gods who always talked of how strong Yehl was, how much potential he had, how many demons he killed in the last month, as if he was a child of theirs, a golden child that would continue to shine above his peers, shine higher than any of the gods that were in the sky, shine bright and pretty that it would blind his eyes, and when there was simply too much light, too much strength in someone, sometimes he had to run. Run deep in the city streets and continue to starve, starve until his stomach literally grew teeth and ate itself.
And he ran from them both, in his godlike form, licking himself clean of all the blood on his feathers.
His blood tasted godlike too, he surmised. The king of king's blood. He could taste everything about his personality in those few licks. That he was going to be a great god, one even more powerful than Yehl, and he thought he could laugh off the thought of having more gods stronger than him, but he couldn't deny his tastes, as they often led him to answers, to food, to victory over his enemies. He could even lick the weakness of Sonic's skin, what he could do to defeat him, but even he didn't had that kind of power. He licked himself again to reassure himself that what he tasted was real, but…it was a strange, very sweet, very strong taste, like the taste of wine, that only a few gods had the power to stop him. Very few. And he knew that he wasn't one of them.
"I should've killed him right away when I had the chance. Once he signs that contract we're as good as goners. As gone as goons."
The night was becoming blacker by the minutes, the seconds, much like his life was ticking if Chip found out what he did. And if his good friend found out too, who also might be responsible, the hungry miserable lot that they were, he would grow angry too, and consider him no longer a friend, but just a stupid goon who couldn't do anything right. But this happened all the time. And they were still together. Simply because he thought his friend couldn't stand the thought of being separated.
It was time to go back to drinking sewer water and scavenging for leftover McDonald's and rotten fruit!
He flew back to their home, their miserable, rotting, stinking hole that they called a home, and he talked with his friend and they yelled and got angry and soon had a pissing contest of who was stronger until they both fell asleep.
—
"Tell me your name, blue hedgehog. And why should I give you back this pen when I know that being a god is only dirty work, something that you'll only regret when you destroy the lives around you and you eventually destroy yourself?"
His arm was wrapped with a tourniquet of a thick black garbage bag, the only thing they could find at the time. As for his muzzle, the side of his face was still rustic with blood, as he continued to pick at all the holes, ushering in more blood, wishing he didn't need to answer his questions and just collect the pen and be on his way. He just wanted to be a god because he was bored. And he wanted his brother to come back to his life. That was it. He needed some color in all the black and white.
"Because I want to revive my brother."
"Anansi? I remember him. He fought a few demons for a while, then he decided to not fight anymore and write all the time. He was a coward, but at the same time, he was very smart, because he knew he didn't need to handle all this constant bullshit we deal with day in and day out. I'm still not giving it back to you, and I'm still going to steal all the pens Chip will give you, because you don't need to become a god. It's a bad job for you. You work 24 hours with no pay, only pain. That was what your brother did, and can't you see what happened to him? Eventually all the folklore for him died out, and his disease soon overwhelmed him. The only reason Chip wants to bring him back because he sees you as a valuable customer, a valuable warrior, and he wants to sign on only the people he thinks are strong and capable, but…"
"But what? If I'm strong and capable, then what's the big deal? Just give me back the damn pen!"
He leaped towards him, the jeweled spectacle he once thought he had in his hands, until the raven god disappeared in the shadows, melting away into the darkness, and Sonic crashed into the granite of the street, his muzzle bleeding profusely again. The raven god soon emerged in the light, glancing at him with a look that one would give when scorning a child, one who was naive and didn't know much better, so his parents had to teach him a lesson. He clucked his tongue and shook his head, as he thought of how much he wanted to be a god too when he first began, but the choice soon fell into regret. Too quickly. When he wanted to drink all the power he had in his hands, but it was too much for his throat that he nearly could choke on all of it, the folklore he carried, the many demons he defeated, the many other gods he had to kill just to preserve his life, and the lives of the others if some were exactly like Quetzal, eating others simply because he hungered so much for everyone else's blood. When he knew that as long as the mortals refused to believe in them, they couldn't mess with their lives. Only the ones who questioned and did believe in their tales and their stories were suffering from the gods' misery and fates. And not many of them ever believed in an Indian raven god he had to admit.
But the god he could become…so many of them did believe in him, and he found that he could be more powerful than himself. And while he was looking for his best interests and the life he had to live with his brother being the god that chose to not fight demons and only create stories, likely to die again by his own hand and his own illness, he also didn't want anyone stronger than him. He feasted on the power he had. It was the only good thing he had in this life of being a god. And sometimes he craved more of it; he wanted to lap his tongue all over the delicious strength he gained, simply for fighting more demons and fighting more gods, that he couldn't let anyone else have that. Not even this strange hedgehog who he could tell had a different reason altogether for fighting alongside him other than his brother dying. There was another reason, tucked inside him, and the blue hedgehog simply wouldn't let it out to him. It still remained inside him with chains and belts.
Boredom.
It changed people when they were put up against not doing anything for a long time. Hours, days, months, years. That's what Sonic faced with. Boredom for years. When you were bored, you often did things you wouldn't ordinarily do. And Sonic wanted to sign a contract with a questionable god and have a questionable war against demons with questionable people he couldn't ever trust to help him and questionable consequences for deciding to be full of all this great power and having all these abilities in your arsenal. It was very questionable indeed, but Sonic thought he would do it, because living his life full of boredom was questionable in of itself. If he was so bored that his entire body turned stiff, his hands and feet would become numb and he would question his existence on this world, maybe that was why he tried the suicide attempt earlier on February 12th, 2012. It was simply because he couldn't stand being this damn bored with his damn life any longer, and his brother only made it entertaining with his stories and his constant illness.
How could you be so selfish?
Boredom is also selfishness, in a way. Sometimes you did things you ordinarily wouldn't do with the people you loved, but if you felt constantly ill yourself with your parents paying too much attention to anyone else but you and never impressing anyone with anything he did but being "average" at everything and having only an average life except for your brother, well, it was time to make his life extraordinary. It was time for him to perform miracles and play with people's lives. The average, bored, blind, deaf, and dumb people that he saw everyday, he would now listen to them, and he would make them know of someone who was worth paying attention to.
"And I said, what is your name, blue hedgehog?"
He looked up at the hedgehog with the tin crow mask again. He was wearing it over his face, looking much like a plague doctor in the Middle Ages. Sonic certainly had the disease he was trying to cure all along, but the plague doctor was simply making it worse, like he did with every single one of his other patients.
"Sonic. Sonic the hedgehog."
"And you do realize that now I know your name, once you become a god, I can use that name to stop your powers anytime. Once a god's name is revealed, once their real name is spoken, they cannot do anything. So if I say 'Sonic', you cannot use your divine powers against me. You will be as useless as a broken needle, this broken needle, right here."
He pulled it out, the needle that was rusty and no longer as silver and as slim as a tear drop of mercury any longer, with its point bitten off by something out there, or someone, and he wondered why he was even bothering showing him this useless object, that possibly had no significance to anything here, that had no significance on Sonic's decision.
As he twirled the needle in his hands, the broken spindly top looking like metallic teeth that wanted to sink into him like the snake god, he knew that although he had so much of this power that might be gone from him one day, he knew he would become a god, no matter how much he would try to "discipline" him on the life of one. It just was going to be what it was going to be. But yet, when he looked into his stone cut jade eyes, he felt that he was chosen for it, as if his entire family was born from a line of gods. First his brother, and now him. And sometimes these things just seemed to pass into the family line. Their blood was rich, and full of greatness. And Sonic would become a god that would surpass them all. He felt that he could feel it as the needle was ready to bite into Sonic, chewing on his skin, chewing through his blood and veins.
As the needle made his muzzle stream more blood, long scarlet streaks that crawled through his chest, the mark of the gods and the mark of the magi, he said, "I will give you the pen, if you want to do me a great favor." Sonic could feel the teeth tear through him, the fangs slicing through his muscle. "This needle…you see, I'm going to shove it in your wounds, and I want you to not get it treated for a while. Just make the needle stay there, inside your body, for all of these years to come when you're a god (or maybe you won't live long at all, but for some reason I feel like that isn't going to happen), and then when you're nearly dead, I want you to pull the needle out of your face, and I want you to take a long good look at it and tell me what you see. You got that? Trust me; you're going to die one of these days being a god. I'm even going to die one of these days. New gods come in, they get powerful, and then they decide you aren't worth shit and they decide they want you to be as dead as a cow on a ranch, slaughtered and soon on the stove as the fat man cooks you to make a burger out of your blood, and they'll probably feast on it like that Quetzalcoatl was doing with you. We gods are savages, but it is how we live, and you have to realize that we aren't as divine as the people who live here. We are as blind, deaf, and dumb as them, but we have only our powers and our other senses to guide us. But in the end, we are as dead as them, except our graves are decorated with stars and the blankets of the galaxy. Take the needle in your flesh, and when it is about time to die, tell me all of what you see, what it pulls out, otherwise I will only say your name when you're nearly dead from a god who wants to kill you for fame and power and you can't even fight back, you will be as defenseless as a worm when we dig through the earth and find one and crush it with our bare hands, all the juices and blood seeping from its pink groveling body, dried up and flattened and no one will give a shit that it's dead."
And Sonic, as bored as he was, blind and deaf and dumb with it, he said yes as the needle was plunged inside him, his muzzle bleeding and decaying and ripped even more than what it was, except he thought that he would never die, because true gods were truly immortal, their stories forever and as tried and true as time itself, and as he thought on the pride he held in his body, the gold glowing thing that was as bright and delicious as ambrosia and mead, he felt a pinprick as he felt his bloodied and scabbed face, and he could only smirk as he felt the small jolt of pain, as if the entire process was a funny game to him, and the raven god handed him the pen, made with rubies and gold and silver and mercury (but don't tell anyone that), and Sonic finally had the key to becoming a god. The key that would lead him to freedom and salvation. The key to no longer having a boring life, but one that would make him into a savage, one that would give him an injection of war and hate into his life, the needle dissolving into his skin, dissolving into his vessels, into his tissues and heart and soul.
He wasn't sure what the raven god was trying to prove to him for the needle to become a part of him. But the raven was a mysterious creature, as his brother, Anansi, would tell him.
As he held the pen in his fingers, he saw the god had dissolved into the darkness just as smoothly as the needle, no longer seeing his bright golden outlines in the shadowy streets touched by the streetlights, but after the battle with the god and the meeting of another one, he considered his mission done, his goal accomplished. He just needed to meet the fairy Chip again and sign his life away to fight in all of these wars, these wars where he could possibly die in.
But dying was the only thing he could ever feel himself become alive in this world. As he felt with Quetzalcoatl. To see his blood running from his skin was a rush to him, his heart beating faster, his breath catching up, and meeting with the darkness. He could see all the gods in that darkness, he could see all the afterlife's and all the Hells and underworlds, and he thought he had a greater vision than anyone now. He was going to be a prophet of the world, a savior, no longer someone blind deaf and dumb. No longer restrained by the mortal skin, his eyes and heart and soul were of a higher power, and he needed to escape from no longer seeing and believing all these religions, all these gods that walked on the same earth as him. He would live a life just as good as his brother before he died, except he would march on the lines with the rest of them, not retreating to his room to his typewriter and creating webs upon webs of escape from the dysphoria they all experienced in their flesh.
And he heard a man singing a song before he left back to his home to treat his injuries, as he sat in the darkness, looking up at the ocean blue moon that he thought would've belonged to both the raven god's eye and the sea dragon's as well.
He could still hear the words of it rattling through his body as he unwrapped the garbage bag from his arm, and treated it with peroxide and white cloth bandages…
Vacate is the word…
Vengeance has no place on me or her
Cannot find the comfort in this world…
Artificial tear…
Vessel stabbed
Next up, volunteers
Vulnerable, wisdom can't adhere…
He felt so separated from his body. From his own blood flesh and bone. He felt that it belonged to someone else, to someone who wasn't born yet, a new person developing inside his brain chest and heart. He didn't want to drown in this new developing person. He wanted to drown in power, in the riches of being a god, not to die in his own skin. Not to decay away while his organs turned gray and white.
A truant finds home
And a wish to hold on…
But there's a trapdoor in the sun…
Immortality…
Would there be a trick in signing to this creature called Chip? He had to fight, otherwise he would die. His body would collapse. But it was collapsing in itself already. Fighting made the blood run, made his brain fast and his heart and breath race across the galaxies. If he kept fighting, and survived, then there would be no need to worry about his body dying, succumbing to illness or age. He would live on for very many years, more years than his brother ever had in his life. More years his brother would live now once he was revived. He wasn't sure if he would continue to write his stories, or if he would fight with him. But he doubted as much. His brother never fought. Even with immortal eyes and soul his body was still weak. Still fatalized with his disease the doctors told him when they tested him at the age of 2, called Cystic Fibrosis.
As privileged as a whore
Victims in demand for public show
Swept out through the cracks beneath the door
Holier than thou, how?
Surrendered
Executed anyhow
Scrawl dissolved, cigar box on the floor
He laid on his bed, watching the lights from the cars go by, the thick white lights racing across the dark contours of his room to the world outside.
He listened to them go by…if he imagined enough, they sounded similar to the waves crashing on the beach, the beach where he nearly died. He could still taste the salty skin of the dragon, as it breathed in and out, its silver fingers prodding the sand…
A truant finds home…
And a wish to hold on to…
He saw the trapdoor in the sun…
Immortality…
He imagined himself on the beach again, watching the sunrise as 5 AM crawled across his alarm clock, the science fiction-like bright green digits flashing across the room, screaming for him to get up. He could only slap the snooze button as he lied on his stomach, with his head covered deep in his pillow, as he fell asleep as the rosy light was breathed out in his room.
Today was the day.
The day his blood would be gold and silver, maybe with some mercury attached to it too.
He dreamed of sweet dreams, dreams he would never have if his blood was red.