The city looked dead, empty of humans, the creatures that she never known had owned the world until the rats and the diseases and the death of the sun and the moon had taken them. The moon still lied, shattered, in the edge of the sky, its shards falling to the earth, cutting up anyone who had walked across them. The blood of my own eye still was drained. I was dying more each second. My hands were lacerated with the cuts of the moon being shattered by my own hands. My nose still bled. My ribs were bruised and scarred as the moon had puked its glass on me. I am remembered of when Sonic had tried to feed me, my dear brother. And he was going to be as dead as me.
Spring was arriving. The warmest weather Seattle had for many months. She could feel the blossoms placenticate, she could feel the warm wind blowing on her coat, and the weather had reeked of the dead bodies that ripened in the air, as the rats had gathered underneath their own gods and had taken them to their own graveyard, where the worshiped humans were soon sacrificed to the machines. She could smell their bleeding hearts, their bleeding skin, their bleeding eyes and their bleeding skulls, but she only noticed the wind, how nice it felt, how it felt like silk underneath her face. She could feel the rain beginning to give birth to the flowers and the animals as they came out of hibernation, their own form of regeneration. Spring was a phoenix, rebirthing everything with its green flames that smelled of magnesium and sulfur, its beak so curved and drenched with placenta blood, its eyes made of the newly yearling stars that soon bloomed like the blossoms in Seattle. The jacket was too large for this weather. It was enough to store the weapons she had inside of her pockets, her knives and swords, but she felt heated inside of it, as if she was inside a boiler room in the church she used to live in what seemed to be I only knew how long she had stayed inside, while the snow inched its white hands on the windowsill, watching a strange white figure say hello to her, telling her to not be afraid, as he was a god, a god of wisdom.
"I only believe in God, and that's it," she said.
"There are other gods too, Blaze," he replied, winking. "They're just hidden. People don't believe in them, and we don't exist. However, believe in us, and we do exist. All it takes is belief. Belief as small as a mustard seed.
He had held the seed to her eyes, and it was so small, that he could roll it in his fingers and easily lose it. He had placed the seed in the palms of her hands, and had kissed them, delicately.
"Now do you believe?"
The seed had grown, to not a mustard seed plant, but a flower made of glass, a white lotus that had contained his heart, the heart that she now must now take care of, cherish, and make sure it never fell in malevolent hands.
"I do believe," she said. "I believe there are other gods than you. I believe that I myself can become a god if I want to. I believe. I believe."
The post-traumatic wiping away the good. The flower inside her pocket glowed like a candle, lighting up the post-apocalyptic darkness, and she placed it on her hands, cupping it, her fingertips stroking it gently. The light had guided her, had left her away from the dark tides inside Seattle, and led her to the bright world that wisdom contained. The light had illuminated all the dark corners of the Earth, even the dark touches of her heart, and she could feel his heartbeat along with hers, and she cried a small spoonful of tears. The earth had swallowed it, and orchids and oleanders had bloomed as it wet the soil.
Fudo had told her to cry when she felt upset. But she could never let those tears fall. Her father, when she could remember him, had told her to never cry, as it was a sign of weakness. Her new father had said nothing of it, and only let her stay in her room as long as she wanted, with the princess decorations seeming so frugal to her inner turmoil. The new father had never made her feel better. He gave her the necessities, except when it came to emotions, and she had tried not to cry those nights as Fudo had walked away, as the flower bloomed in the darkness and became luminous on the cryings of her heart. Her father's voice echoed so harshly in her brain. Telling her not to cry over a god that disappeared so suddenly and seemed to only be a player of others' hearts. But she told him that he was a god of wisdom, not a god of love, and she had stared out into the horizon until the night had bled and scarred the sky and it became morning. The sun had fought the moon for so long, but nothing had come out of its victory. Fudo seemed to never come, until he blazed a blue flame in the middle of the sky, telling her he was there, and he would make everything all right.
Her heart had cried so quietly, as she walked in the alleyways, watching as the moon continued to be broken apart by bitter hands, her tears so small, looking like small stars, the flowers of the galaxy opening up and encasing the sky with violet and blue coats of paint. She knew the sky would always be strange in the end of the world, but she could tell her emotions had brightened it up, but she could sense a war coming on with her tongue. She could taste the blood of the raven, the blood of the thunderbird, and the blood of the goddess of healing. Many gods would die on this fateful day.
She had lapped up the violescent sky, tasting of mead and honey. Her fingers shook as she opened up the sky and tore out the hearts of the galaxy, the little forget-me-nots, the flowers as she had arranged them in a crown made of sharp glass and had worn it proudly, as her eyes had looked reminiscent of the blooming universes, the flowers that opened up on this warm spring day. Fudo had said that her eyes looked like stars. And she hoped it was true.
She had felt full of knowledge, in her stomach that could only stretch so much. The universe had told her of many truths and many lies, and she had believed in all of them. She had prayed to me, the god that she was supposed to believe in, and she asked me why I wanted the world to end. And I had told her that I was ill, and when gods were ill, they were faulty machines, and they soon broke down and the sky would also break, and so would the rivers and the oceans, and the weather and the planets that accompanied them when they were lonely at night. Break me, and all of those things are broken. I had to let someone else take over the job. And she could only say nothing, and walk towards the graveyard, as the shadows had loomed over her, talking in a language she couldn't understand. Her eyes had become black, and she had tried to scare the shadows away, but their long hooked arms had reached out for her, had told her to not harm Shadow, as he was doing a good deed for everyone.
"What good deed? Knowing him, he can't be up to any good. Chip had told me all about him. He said that he was nothing but a crook."
He is not. He is bringing upon a new world. Respect him, and maybe you will go to this new world with him, with the other gods. Maybe even Silver would come back to see you.
She knew they must be lying to her. The shadows were creatures that only told lies in her ears. Chip had told her everything about them, and Chip was the only one who had led her safely in this contradictory world, and she had known that Shadow was only a smoking overpowered brute that wanted to remain the god on top, to keep all the gods feeding off his gray, dirty hands. He always smelled of cigarettes and carrion from the dead things on the side of the road from that awful crow with the galaxy eyes and the metal wings made from the night sky. She had hated him because Chip hated him. Chip, and Fudo, were her own gods.
She hooked herself to a fence, her white fingers curving like talons, looking at the cemetery that was overrun with reeds and grasses. She knew it was where he was buried. He had played his lutes for her for so long as if he was another god inside, Pan, had kept her in cafes until they closed, nourishing her with warm, gooey food that had loved her insides. His white immaculate fur had always glittered and glistened in the sunlight, and with the aurora of the sky happening as the god began to cut his many selves into different pieces, she knew his fur would shine here too.
The hedgehog with the heart inside a lotus flower. He had loved her, fed her when she was so young and weak, and now she was large and so mighty and her voice had carried heavy storms and heavy deaths…he was there no longer. He had left her life, when someone had taken him away from her. A selfish hawk that had thought he lied in the wake against his precious alcohol. The waves kept turning and churning in the distance, the rats continued to prance in the streets. Blaze had a headache that throbbed in the corners of her forehead, and she winced, thinking of him. His sweet kisses. His sweet brownies and soups and cinnamon rolls he paid for.
Her fingers felt like flickering Bic lighters. They had contained the fluid, and they had grown small and cobalt blue as she had touched the reeds and the tombstones lying delicately in the eye of the storm. Yehl was coming. Yehl was coming to take away everything. The raven was a glutton, always devouring all the dead meat that lied in the road. The waves kept churning and turning, like stomach acid inside her. It had kept churning, and the flames kept embittering, as the blue had turned into a searing yellow, and her fingers had touched his tombstone, the one that was an icy black, and she fell to her knees, sobbed, and read it.
SILVER THE HEDGEHOG
1991-2012
Had always carried a small token of wisdom in his hands. Could swear he was like a god. Could swear he was my own brother.
Maybe his brother knew. Maybe he knew about the god life in Seattle. Or maybe Silver had sent him that his last words would be referencing his secret life. They had spoken through telephone many times when he needed money, or directions to a new cafe in Seattle. His brother once lived there, until he decided to move to the city of kings' in America.
The lotus flower glowed, grooved its petals towards her tears. She could tell he understood, that he still lived on in that flower, but it had to go here, its own little sanctuary where it could finally rest.
Her tears that once were flames, had morphed into small oleanders…
Her pastor was a man who didn't seem to care much for Blaze, except telling her about the word of God and treated with only a small sliver of kindness if she read her Bible. He never was abusive, but he never showed her an inkling of love. He never cut his heart out for her and had shown the bead of dark red blood that had formed on his white shirt. He was a man who only lived out to God's word, and only His, and never hers.
Her room was cold, and had bricks and mortar as her motif. Her pastor had exploded the room in a sea of pink, with her princess decorations straight from a Disney store, but she had already grown too old for the princess at age 6. The young little girl who was so impressionable and so innocent in the eyes of God, she had wanted heroes and knights and men that were brave enough to sacrifice their own life for the people, like Robin Hood, like King Arthur, like Odysseus. But the pastor, the man who suddenly tore through her life, had never infirmed her belief in men who would rescue her from her own little torment. He only prayed silently for many hours, had done his daily church work, and had talked to everyone that came and went, but after the church services the pastor was so tired that he said nothing at all to his Blaze. He just told her to not play her Mozart and Orla Fallon too loud else the Lord would be very disappointed in her. And she never wanted the Lord disappointed in her. It could cast her into an eternity of Hell, which was a very bad place for young girls like her.
The cat, how torn her eyes seemed to be off her skull, she never cared about a Hell when she was 6. Blaze thought she already lived in one.
Her mother had died of cancer (she wasn't sure of which type, exactly) when she was about 3. Her father drank often following her death. The sky was a chromium brown, as she devoured only a box of crackers from her father's lunch sack, she wanted to make something more elaborate for herself, the animal crackers never enough to fulfill her constantly starving stomach. Little Blaze, about 4 years old (but she truly couldn't remember her age) thought on when she had tried to prepare food for herself, her father had slapped her hand away from the stove and had told her, "Let me do it, or you'll get something worse than my smack! A burn! Don't play with fire, my lil' Blazie!" And the dinner had turned out to only be a can of beans, overcooked, with some beetles crawling in it while he didn't notice. Blaze had never minded the slap and instead took sandwich meat from her father's secret stash and had made herself a decadent sandwich. He never noticed. He was always too overflowing with Pabst to notice.
Her father had tried to have family moments with her, but Blaze wanted nothing to do with him. He wasn't like her mother, from what she could remember. Her father had said, between his sobering periods in which he felt guilty about everything he had done towards her, that her mother was an angel, and she had kept the family sewed shut with a special, adorning ribbon. Only experienced three years of her, Blaze thought mournfully. After that, she was shut tight in God's kingdom, and never let out.
She knew he never truly loved her, and she never truly loved him. It was a ploy to get her to sympathize with her father, and she never fell for it. Her father had sharp guillotine teeth and whiskers and a tail that was like a wire. He was a rat. Pure and simple. He ate rotten cheese and alcoholic chocolate and grape juice and often talked about a man who forced him into cannibalism and he cried all day and all night about that. Blaze wasn't sure exactly where those memories ebbed from. Her father was just as confused as she was.
Her father had taught her fishing, but she wasn't interested in doing it for sport. He had asked her if she liked to read romance novels, like Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts. But she preferred classics. She was reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo and her father had replied that she was a strange kid, never seen a kid like her, no sirree, never seen a kid like her. She is smart, but by golly, the other kids ain't gonna like her.
The father had taken another swig of Pabst, and had said nothing more. His eyes were full of disdain over his daughter, and Blaze could tell she was leading the life he never wanted her to live. Then his long, slender white skinned fingers had found a piece of black mold and he ate it, chewed it scrumptiously, and swallowed it. And she held her mouth, contained her small heart and stomach inside her, and tried not to puke.
And he downed another Pabst, had rolled himself in a tarp made for covering pools, and fell asleep, once in a while twitching and complaining of the cold.
They were homeless, and soon lost their home due to her father never going into work to pay the bills.
The library allowed her to read to get away from the monotony of being homeless, to get away from her father puking in the sidewalks and eating beetles and once being mad enough to eat a dirty diaper.
Her father died ten years ago. He had collapsed on the street, with a concussion that remained untreated. Blaze didn't call for help. She kept reading Robinson Crusoe while he bled to death. She tried to ignore everything her father did, even dying at that moment.
When the paramedics had taken him away, they had asked her why she didn't reach someone for help. Because, she answered swiftly, my father was a rat, and I should never care for him. Soon enough, his name Donovan fell to ashes, and he became a rat named Benjamin Button along with his other ratties, Durden and Beowulf and Holden and the others before him, such as Randall McMurphy, Odysseus, and Romeo and Juliet, and…and…
He never was like her mother, why should she care? He was a drunkard that didn't went to work and would rather have her starve, why should she care? He often took her library books and had used them to make fires, having the library give her their apologies and let her borrow another book, so why should she care at all that her father was dead? He never cared for her after her sweet mother died, so why? Why at all should she even give a tiny amount of care that her father was being dissected by God and sent to Hell?
A pastor, one she could never remember the name of (she never cared for him either), had volunteered to take care of her. The pastor often left doing church duties and had taken her with him to missionary trips to Africa, but they often said nothing except that he wanted her to behave. Blaze never noticed how beautiful Kenya was, or how the lions and zebras and hyenas and all those other animals she heard about were so alive, so vivid in her eyes, yet she never was interested in them as much as her books. She had brought The Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, along with Dubliners and Finnegan's Wake. Blaze laid her simple and atavistic thoughts on if the churches were much the same as her pastor's, or if she will ever be treated like Stephen Daedalus, be abused by the church system and be told that she was a sinner, until she had reached for the sun and her wings were melted, the wax and feathers perishing under the heat. Her pastor had asked Blaze if she ever read Plato and Herodotus and she said she was only concerned with fiction. Her pastor then had said nothing after that, but she had heard words similar to being a foolish child who is playing and tinkering in her mind with all these ideas as if she was masturbating.
Back at the castle. Back eating mutton and potatoes for supper, the pastor being an Irish Catholic. Blaze wondered how all the Irish references were beginning to fall on her. The Orla Fallon CDs she listened to she greatly enjoyed, the Celtic language sounding crisp and sweet to her ears. The James Joyce novels where most of his influence was drawn to being Irish for all his life. And the pastor for being Irish, for believing fully in the Catholic system, that God had constantly watched her for her sins and her playings with her mind. Touched the mutton with her round spoon full of leaves and rusted berries, and Blaze believed she was never allowed to be creative in the pastor's home. She was given logical things to play with, even if believing in a god wasn't a logical thing at all to her. Blaze practiced playing the piano and had tried, desperately, to please her pastor (and herself), but her skills were second to a spider crawling across the keys, chasing after a fly without a web. She was given maths and was forced to draw only shapes without features, and she had never enjoyed it, although she had decent grades in the school her pastor had enrolled her in (Catholic, and she hated it like most of America's population she surmised). But she just wanted to read, and the writing and language arts were what she excelled in, but her pastor never seemed to care. And the literature was too stale. Void of imaginary worlds, of characters worth respecting, of plots worth investing into! She had sunk her teeth into literature, and the Catholic school had barely given her anything worth chewing over!
Blaze lied in her bed, crying over yet another book. The House of Leaves was over, and she was so distraught that the story had ended, and nothing else of value would come to her life. Her pastor had only bought her one good book, and the rest were only bricks full of dull, uninteresting lithographs that meant nothing! The library was now forbidden as the pastor had thought Blaze had spent too much time reading and not enough time on youth and church work. Her card was taken away, and he handed her the mop.
"These floors need to be swept, my dear Blaze. They're not going to clean themselves. Effort is needed in order to get a good result of your actions."
Blaze sighed. Couldn't argue with the pastor any more. Blaze knew if she argued with him, was disruptive, and was a disobeying child, she not only could be sent to Hell, but her pastor had told her he could always take her back to the foster home, as any time he couldn't handle her, she could be sent there, with no books or toys to play with, no children that would care to play with her. Blaze was alone for most of her life and was mostly stoic when he told her the threat of being sent back to the home, but she imagined her life could get much worse. She could be with parents that were much like her father.
The wind caressed her face. The small, fragile cat, the food barely sticking to her thin bones, she could hear the chime of the church bells as he came, the hedgehog with so much wisdom in his tufted and quilled head that he had wanted to share it to anybody, including Blaze, a girl he soon grew to adore.
With a kindling of flames at his fingertips, he warmed her up, and had asked her why she was crying, as ladies like her, so beautiful, so dainty, should never cry on a day such as this. It was Saint Patrick's Day.
"My books…I can never read a good book again. My…foster father won't let me go to the library anymore. This was such a wonderful book, I need to read more of them. But he says the imagination is a dangerous thing and shouldn't be let loose."
"Why, the imagination is a wonderful thing, Blaze!" She conjectured how he knew her name after only meeting twice, but she could tell he was a wonderful being. A being that could make the stars fly out of the sky and on her dress, and show her a world that she could learn about if she gave the time and effort, not at all like her pastor had tried, to make her so dead in the brain about these other worlds besides the ones that God (I) had made. (I didn't make them. A past God did. But I made elks and Canada and Seattle and coffee and goldenrods and rats. I should be proud of myself, huh? I gave the plague to Europe in the Middle Ages. It seemed trite with what's happening now.)
"It can make you go to different places, it can make you imagine all kinds of new things, it can lead you to a world just like Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, or the medieval ages in Robin Hood, in Ireland like in A Portrait of the Artist! Imagination isn't a thing you need to cage up in hopes it doesn't hurt anyone! It can be taught to love and to kiss and to give passion in your life. Why is your father acting this way? Imagination had never hurt anyone!"
"It created weapons, he says. It makes people believe in false gods other than our own. He says God doesn't want you to be distracting yourself from His world. Because He created it, and He wants you to be the central protagonists in His story, your story."
"Is that so?"
The mutton and potatoes were always bland, and the chicken was often overcooked to a crispy black leg. Her father once in a while had given her fried fish, but only near February. Blaze thought about the holiday of Lent in Catholicism, and she thought it was all a crock, and just an excuse for Catholics to eat something good once in a while. Fish was her favorite food, and often her pastor had made it a delightful dish. Maybe he cared about her only during Lent. Such a far off holiday. On such a short month.
Silver invited her to go to a coffee shop. Take a nice book to read, he'll pay for it, and he'll pay for her lunch too. And he'll tell her all about himself. He was a god, he said. But a god that wasn't like God. He was hired by God, to keep the demons in the world aligned.
They went to a bookstore that smelled of roast coffee, as the scent of boiling tea and soups were ingrained into her nose, they had taken a seat on fine, ivory carved chairs, and he told her his name was Fudo, a Japanese fire god of wisdom.
"And I was drawn to your intelligence, Blaze. You seem to be a very intelligent child for your age. Now, what would you like to eat? I suggest the clam chowder along with a frappe. They make the best clam chowders and frappes."
And she ordered just that.
The clam chowder and frappe were both condensed in a white frothy foam that could've been piled with a decadent cherry, and though she had never tasted of clams before in her seemingly short and insignificant life, she enjoyed it, and even cleaned the bowl with her tongue and had sipped the very last trail of liquid in her frappe. She never had such a soothing meal before, with a warm soup, a nice coffee, and a book to read and relax to as they played the Indigo Girls and the Goo Goo Dolls, and the music of her world, Orla Fallon. The song that played as she was rocked and cooed to sleep by both her books and Fudo was Gartan Mother's Lullaby.
Sleep, O babe, for the red bee hums the silent twilight's fall
Eeval from the gray rock comes to wrap the world in thrall
A lyan van, o my child, my joy, my love and heart's desire
The crickets sing you a lullaby beside the dying fire…
His arms, how safe they were, how safe were the nice worlds inside a good book…
Her eyes had grown milky as the tune seemed to melt in her ears, becoming a liquid mess of notes and Irish lyre, and she wondered if her father was ever Irish and had spread that full-blooded madness inside her, the drinking he had done, the Catholic upbringing that now pervaded her as she was with a pastor who often warned her against the heathen world of believing in other gods, oh how polytheistic all of this was! Only monotheistic beliefs were made to survive in this world of myths and lies! She had remembered of the tales her mother had told her by the wicked spindly trees in their backyard, about how the ravens had meant a war will come, and the leprechauns had hoarded all the gold inside this tree, and if they tore off a piece of the bark, they would see a spark of honey and a brilliance of the metal, a piece of golden wire inside the tree. And that good luck would happen if she ever stumbled upon a four-leaf clover, and the blarney stones, yes those, and the Celtic music that always played and rumbled like the falls of a creek spilling a rainbow spray from its mouth and from its bloody muddy skin, and her mother had danced with her, had given her a tale to watch out for Morrigan, the crow that could also turn into a heifer, an eel, and a wolf, as the snow had fallen delicately upon their modest house like a naked porcelain woman, their house her bed as she sat beside her lover who made her orgasm, the sun.
"When she comes, she foretells a war, and bloodshed, my dear Blaze. She had warned many soldiers, but they soon had died. They never listened, and I want to let you know that it can still happen. Gods are all around us, Blaze. They are real once you give them flesh and bones and a tongue and heart. They are real once you lend them your heart and tongue and they begin to use it as their own. I can tell something strange is going to happen, Blaze, and I don't like the smell of it."
Her mother always had an acute sense of smell. She could sniff her father's cigarettes and stench of beer what seemed to be miles away. She had asked her husband if he had been drinking again, and he told her that she could go to sleep, she is weak and full of hysteria.
"I'm not being hysteric, Donovan, I'm just hoping you're not drinking again. You drink too much. You know that. The whole city knows that you're a drunk. You tried to quit, but it never helped, and I was basically here to make you feel better. But I want to take Blaze with me any moment I can get and leave you behind. I could get a lot further if I wasn't so dependent on your insurance."
He coughed, almost choking on his own vomit and burps and hacks, and he said that it was alright, he knew she would die before him anyways.
"I won't. I'm sure I can beat this cancer. My fur is falling, shedding, and I can no longer have cigarettes, a lot of medication that puts me to a lulling sleep, and I'm sure I'll be fine. It's what cures cancer. That and a very long sleep, away from you. I wouldn't have minded it if Blaze wouldn't be so affected."
He said nothing, shook his head and his spinal white hands as he huffed out his last cigarette, and he stomped it on the floor, taking another swig of Pabst to drown it all out, the cigarette and her words.
Then he finally spoke with words that had substance in them, real flesh and bones. "Of course she will be affected. I'm her father. And I will give her better care than you ever did. You with your Irish Celtic shit. She doesn't want that. Our little girl needs God. I can tell she wants to pray to get you to feel better. I have Bibles to hand to her, but she won't read the goddanged things, the poor girl. The poor sonofabitchin' girl."
And he spat, as if the words contained her physical image and the spit had seeped in the cracks of her hair, her fur that was dirty and unkempt after refusing so many baths from her father.
He didn't care either. The spit would remain in her calluses, and he could simply drink his away. The spit he had received when he was a drunk, from God (Me Myself and I).
"Alcohol is the blood of Christ. And hell ain't I a sinner if I drink so much of it."
Blaze watched the window of the house expectantly, waiting to see the green car of her mother pull out of the driveway and into yet another research center for cancer, or another hospital to get another medication for her bladder and her shedding fur and her eyes that swelled up too much, and to go to another bar to meet a man who wasn't a drunk like her father, and come home after his cock was in her mouth, tasting of salt and cream and breast milk.
She had smelled that scent in her mother, and the scent of roses and incense.
Light up the incense! Let the spirits rise in the dark! Let them crawl towards you! claw you! feed on your skin! and her mother would pray to the Celtic spirits, telling them that she wished her daughter all the best after her death. The cancer was terminal. She was going to die in a month.
Blaze saw crows in the backyard, sitting on a lone branch, their beaks so cadaverous, their wings so wide, like the night sky…
They had told her that a great war was coming. That the spirits, the shadows that fell in her mother's room, ready to pick up the ashes of the incense, pick up the tears in her mother's eyes, and tell her that everything was going to be alright, cause the shadows had cleaned everything in the world, had hidden everything in a shroud of black. Her tears were hidden. So was the smoke of the incense, the ashes that had dusted the floor. They had taken their metaphorical broom and had swept it away.
Her Celtic mother and her Irish father who split his head and had borne a new world inside the concrete, the city of rats. God bless them (I didn't.).
She imagined her father a man who was nothing but a giant sack of rats, ones tortured from a life of being treated by a sadistic man. She wasn't sure where this allegory came from. But she could feel the rats running and scattering and thrumming through the streets, and inside her old man's organs, where they ate his bitter heart like chocolate, and had drunk his liver like the fine wines he had always sipped when they were at the dinner table. He was full of rats. His stomach digesting them all. The rat tails being his intestines. Rat kings full of shit. So bloody full of rats, she thought.
The fall had ended when she died, and the winter had begun its tyranny, the snow killing everything it touched, its own form of natural genocide on the plants and trees that wanted to have a regular life, living in the slums of this world when their clothes were taken away, and now they were deloused and taken to camps. And she thought of her mother much the same, as the nurses had taken her to a sheeted room, chartreuse room, where the knives had contrasted the yellow, the blood so bright in her eyes, the wallpaper beginning to peel from the bored patients who waited for so long to get treated…
Her mother had no muscles in her body, only bones and only shivering tissues of her organs that were slowly failing and nothing else, and her head was as bald as the sun's, and her body was as frail as the trees outside her window, being full of crows and ravens. And they had taken her away, to the concentration camp inside the sky. She was being killed for being a gypsy, and that's why Satan had given her cancer.
Blaze had traced the words of the Celtic songs she heard on the sand of the beach in Seattle even when it was so cold her jacket was never enough to keep away the frigid dead snowy hands of winter to take her to the camps, and she hoped someone could hear her pleas and cries for help that her Celtic mother had left, but her father, the father that had ingested so many rats, had told her it was time to go back home.
"I want to stay here," she said, with no emotion.
"She's gone, Blazie. She's gone and never comin' back. Let's go home, I'm starving. You can mope about that bitch when you get to your room and you can listen to your shit."
She refused to argue with him. All the energy had gone out of her body since her mother died. She no longer was the energetic Blaze everyone knew of. Tired, always willing to go down with her father further into the reaches of Hell they had warned her about.
She was gone. As Fudo carried her back home to her lone church and castle, smelling the bland scent of chicken being cooked, she wearily watched him as he tucked her into her bed, had told her that she will be a god that will see the end of the world, will battle with strength she never she had inside, but as the moon had lazily stretched towards the sky and was soon sent to sleep too for cheating on the sun's woman, she soon forgot all he said. She closed her leathery lids and went to sleep.
Blaze meditated as soon as she got up and took a warm shower as warm as the church would allow, what Fudo wanted with her. And why she was supposedly so important to the gods. The gods that she was told had never existed, except by her mother. Smelling eggs being cooked by her pastor, but she knew they wouldn't taste as good as the aroma it gave off. The pastor continued to say very little words on where she had been, and she dusted her eggs with a lot of pepper. It was the only way to make them have flavor in her mouth. Even if they were too spicy when she later put Tabasco sauce on them.
The next night, Fudo came again, and he asked her if she had ever watched the sea at night before, when the plankton illuminated it to an electric blue. She said yes, but only with her father, the ratbrained idiot she always hated. He said this time, this moment would be special, and he held out a gloved hand (razorred with small red marks that she knew was where the fire had come from), and as she watched the stars glow like the flowers she had decorated her room with, swaying so slightly with the night spring breeze, he had taken her hand and they walked to the sea of Seattle, the beach where she wrote her mother's name and the call for help in Celtic, the call that only ravens and eels and wolves and cows could understand.
She saw a raven, with metallic wings and an eye that oozed of burning universes and suns and stars, it stared at her as she walked on the sand, noticing how soft it felt between her toes, not at all like the hard floor she knew of back at the pastor's abode. She never realized how delicate sand was before, as she had taken Fudo's hand and had taught him to dance underneath the watchful eyes of the stars, his movements slow and awkward. She laughed as she felt herself become a queen again, like her mother had always told her she was, when she had given her a bouquet of violets and orchids and goldenrods and oleanders, a strange arrangement of flowers, but her mother said that all the flowers were special.
"When I was meditating last night Blaze, I thought I could sense these flowers becoming a big part of your life someday. And lotus flowers too. I'm not sure exactly how this will come to be, but I believe in the gods and goddesses' power in keeping you safe and making you have a safe journey without me. At least, I hope so. I thought I could hear one of those gods saying that it wasn't true and you'd die like the rest of them."
The flowers were soon rotted by the smell of her father and his alcoholic breath, his fingers staining everything they touched. He was a dirty man, a man who had so many creatures inside his gut implanted by the gods, and as he drank more Pabst's and cheap beer, she could tell he was a very disgusting man, eating meat raw without a forethought, even attempting suicide by eating a raw bloody chicken. He never died. His body had absorbed it, as the rats had eaten through it clean and had picked through all the bones and used them to clean their front teeth.
"What are you thinking about, Blaze?"
She couldn't think straight, like most people could. She thought in jagged lines, in lines underneath those lines that curved and led to nowhere and went about 180 degrees away from where she wanted to be. Scrambled as the scrambled eggs she ate with no flavor except for pepper and Tabasco. She held onto his hand so tightly, her eyes brimming with tears as if it was a latrine, and she kept holding on, as the waves had swallowed the shore, had kept devouring it and puking it and eating it, like a masticating cow eating its lonely supper of grass, when it truly wanted steak from its brethren.
She could see how there was going to be such a large bloodshed ahead of them, a great war that would damage and fringe the edges of the world, and she wanted to believe it wasn't so late she could have yet another piece of berry pie in the cafe. Fudo had said he brought her here for a special purpose, and he needed to discuss her future plans, with her staying with her foster father, the pastor.
"Blaze, I think…well, the whole thing that happened with your mother…it wasn't a coincidence. Your mother…she was a god. For a long time, before she ran out of folklore and had cancer. She was Ernmas, a Celtic mother who gave birth to other gods out there, before you, with multiple men. And you were one of the last ones, Blaze. You are destined to become Morrigan, the goddess of battle and war. And I know you're not happy with your life. I know you're not happy being with that pastor, who's supposed to be your uncle on your father's side. Being a god is hard work, but…" He turned over, his golden, honey-rimmed eyes gazing into her own. "You don't have much to lose, I don't think. And you have me. I can take care of you better than your uncle can. Trust me."
Her mother was a goddess. A Celtic goddess that lived for about 500 years before she soon had grown sick with not finding enough folklore and settling down and raising her child, Blaze. Her other children were with other fathers, other gods, but yet she had chosen to stick around and raise her. She must've been something special, she thought. The others she possibly never saw again or divorced the fathers without gaining custody of the children. She circumspected on why she would never meet her own children again except for her, but it was possibly the god life that had absorbed her and kept her alive for so long. Her mother barely showed any signs of aging except when she was sick, her skin wrinkled and withered, her lips no longer the color of fire, her eyes dull and itchy and irritated. Her mother had led quite a life until she gave birth to Morrigan, then she died while Blazie was stuck with her drunk religious nut of a father, as he gave birth to a million rats in the street. Maybe he was a god too. She wasn't sure.
"Why would I want to become a god, Fudo? Sure I can live for many years, no longer be with my uncle, be with you, but…I don't think I'm up for that. Fighting other gods and demons, getting folklore and all that…I don't think I can do it. It seems nigh impossible for me to live this life. I think I'd rather be with my uncle and live in his cruddy church. And his cruddy food. And dealing with everyone being fake and believing they're going to heaven when I know they aren't cause they poisoned their dog and they abused their children…"
He gazed at the stars, saw how they bleed with the color of cobalt blue, fluorescent and nearly matching the sea that had drowned out the sand between their feet as the plankton crawled towards their toes.
God's creation lighting up the sea and making it a bright cerulean blue, as she could hear the cries of the sea dragon, mournful and melancholic, seeing its crystal eyes stare back at her own, shining brightly against the light of the moon. An illumination of the sea dragon that lived underneath the pier, as it cried and called out for the gods to feed it, to feed it with a spoon full of oatmeal and mashed sweet potatoes…
"Again Blaze, you don't have much to lose. I can see you can become a powerful god. I can see you seeing the dusted night sky, with a purple aurora making it bloom with vivid vivacity, when the world is…well, I'll tell you about that later, but…I need help Blaze. I can tell my folklore is low. I want to keep living. I want to keep trying to make people happy. There were other gods I made follow my footsteps, until they realized that life was so precious that they wanted to live for many years, even a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, five hundred, a thousand years! Life really is grand to live so long for, Blaze. And if you fish for folklore once in a while, you can live for as many years as your mother. You see how the sky changes with each season, how the trees become a chiaroscuro of colors during the fall, that winter kills everything it touches but yet brings happiness to all the children that they don't have school. Spring is the rebirth of Jesus Christ. Summer is when things boil in this pot and becomes exciting, with its fireflies that are the stars that are so close to us that we can touch them and not get burned. Seattle is a wonderful city worth living for, Blaze. You don't realize how lucky you are to live here. I used to be in New York, and that place was full of people who didn't truly have a nugget of wisdom in their brain. But here? It's beautiful, Blaze. The sea, the shops (especially the cafes), how everything seems to just…spring in color, with a painter's eye to detail. And I can't leave a place that's called The Emerald City. It makes me think there's a wizard here, one that will grant me wishes. One that will give me a heart, a brain, courage, and to let me go home to where I belong, here. You are lucky to be born here, where the gods flourish and they seem so alive, so full of organs and their heart carries so much electricity to their brain. I am the god of fire. I destroy things, but I also make the forest come back to life. A phoenix, if you will. And I want to bring you back to life again, like your mother had in the past. You once were born dead Blaze, until your mother…"
"But you can't bring back my mother. She's gone, Fudo. I can't have her back. And I'm sure I can't make her happy by becoming a god. She would want me to have a happy life, even if it's…"
"You have nothing to lose, Blaze. Just talk to Chip and sign the contract."
Silver had known every detail to her life. Every trickling detail that fell to his fingertips.
Her life was becoming as old as her mother, and she was only 14. She had enough of the church jobs, the ignorance and the apathy from her uncle, the lack of good food in her stomach, barely able to read any good books, because her uncle had deemed those books unfit for logical consumption…She wanted to enjoy life as much as she could. Reading her books. Even living for so long that she read every single book in the world. Eating all the good food in the world that she would have a degree in both literature and gastronomy. She lied on the beach sand, watching the stars beginning to fade away. They were soon covered with a ribbon of pink and yellow, xanthic and the dawn began to crawl towards the ocean's fringes like a bleeding watercolor, as her pastor had come looking for her by the small sliver of his lantern light. Like he cared, Blaze thought. He just wants to be like a normal person, caring about his kids. But he doesn't. He never cared about me…
Blaze could hear his husky voice, in the roar of the waves, in the roar of daytime being born, and she had asked Silver where they could sign the contract.
"I'd rather sign it than be there with him again. The bastard. He never lets me read the books I want. He says imagination is a thing to waste when there is only one god to worship out there…"
"He is a god too, Blaze. A god that people worship to keep their rules aligned, their perfection kept in their little small vials around their neck, and be seen as normal as possible by other people who are possibly insane or abnormal. He is the god of normality, Blaze. He is bland. He wants you to live a normal, boring life. But I'm here to take that all away."
Imagination led to extraordinary things. And her uncle wanted to keep her as rooted to reality as possible, even if she thought believing in only one god was far from reality.
"And my father?" she piped up. "Was he a god too? Is everyone in my family a god?"
"Your father? He's Bobd Derg, the Red Crow. He once was an almighty god, a king of an old country town back in Michigan, but he soon moved to Seattle to get more folklore, cause he devoured all of them in that California. But he soon learned about alcohol because the big cities always caused him to drink. He was sick, for a long time, and now he is a rat king, with his tail covered in feces and other rats. How the mighty have fallen, my dear Blaze…"
Alcohol had always turned people into rats. Dionysus himself was nothing but a rat, when he often sipped of that almighty wine. Blaze thought maybe Jesus was nothing but a rat, with his blood so full of alcohol he believed he was a prophet and a son of God. She asked Silver if there was a god who was Jesus, and he said no, not yet, it was all a myth for the humans, made up by other gods, to fork money and resources to the churches, all a fabricated tale to believe in something that didn't exist yet.
Didn't exist yet was the keyword, my dear Blaze.
Blaze and Silver had both seen Chip, a nymph creature made of satin and velveteen, dark red fur the color of blood and with fairy wings that could barely lift his fat jolly body afloat, as he ate licorice, long strings of black velvet down his throat in nearly one gulp. He asked if she wanted a contract to become a god, and she said yes Chip, yes I always wanted to be a god and not live the life of drudgery with my uncle, the man who always believed in perfection and order, and his bland normal food and I think…I think…
I am becoming something more with Fudo.
A god that had an angry face, had a six-pronged sword, but he was a protector, and would always protect Blaze, and her life was sealed in the contract, becoming, with a flash of black, as the crow with the universes in its eyes had watched, she became Morrigan, the daughter of Ernmas, and her eyes had glowed with the fires of ebony, her body seemed to be full of hate against the atrocities of her father, her uncle, the atrocities committed by the world, the sun that always fell an hour earlier in the eave of winter, the moon that had struck depression to those with my disease, she had become wrathful, except when she was under the guise of Fudo, who protected her, who guided her, and who always made sure she had something good to eat and never left the world hungry to do her godly duties.
And her godly duties were always such hated acts, as she had grown to hate the crow that sat on the branch during her knighting to godliness, its wings full of stars, its eyes full of galaxies, and meeting his real form, and even knowing his true name, and learning about his past, she thought with their similarities, she could hate him more, as Chip had told her that he consumed all the folklore her mother was supposed to have, and he was the one who injected her full of the cancer, and had made her die and left her with her rat king father, as the rats had bitten through his heart, and made him into a rotted old bastard for the little furry creatures to masticate on. He was nothing but a wooden door that contained no secrets, but only led to something useless and filled you with hopelessness.
Rats chewed on doors like that all the time, I believe.
They've even begun to chew on me.
The lotus flower signaled to her the way to the cemetery, where she knew she'd be able to kill Shadow, and then killing Jet, who was such a dirty rat that he had murdered her protector, her new father, her parent that had never disappointed her.
She smelled the scent of rats everywhere, as they crawled through the cemetery, eating the old worn-down flowers in the graves. Blaze believed that her father must've been doing such a good job of leading them. Because they were all just like him.
She heard the sound of the rain rustling in the sky, pouring on her fur, and she watched the flower close on Silver's grave, hearing the footsteps of Shadow coming, the shadows beginning to envelop her…
Don't kill him, the shadows said.He did not kill your mother. Other factors have led to her death.
"Liars," she replied.
Shadow stood for what seemed to be another universe collapsing and hatched out of its starry shell, as the cat with so much hatred had cried, letting the flower absorb her tears, the oleanders blooming as Fudo had promised they would. Her tears were full of life, even in this soon dead winter.
And Shadow swallowed them whole in his second mouththroat, for his mother, as well.