The graveyard, moist, red as a tongue inside a bleeding lady's mouth. Blaze had sat and waited for the crow to come. The crow that would grant wishes. To bring birdmilk to her bleeding mouth.
The galaxies in the sky, plum-colored, violet and vivacious, she twists her fingers, she twists them until she couldn't use them anymore. The light had died away. Only a faint maudlin glow of the sun that was killed remained.
Oh, bring me my supposed loved lotus flower, let it shine in the night! Let Fudo scream out in the dark petals of the space's sky, let him love her, guide her, give her rosaries in her hair, give her the best food there was to eat in Seattle, let her cry next to him as she mourned her mother, Celtics dead and gone, the night mourns the loss of so many gods, but the spider that hangs his web in shame, he doesn't care except for his own loss of life. His black legs, his red hourglass mark, he eats the souls of the dead gods that lie in his web like little crystal-dusted balls of rainwater, and he prepares for his great feast.
One god lied awake as the capital G god was asleep, waiting for the stakes to be stabbed in his wrists, the Timekeeper eating his great harvest of food from the Queen and the Slave's cupboard, and the entire red room that looked much like a womb, it turned blue, as blue as badly oxygenated blood.
He could see the many dead bodies lying in the streets, the hole inside the wall that told him many humans were dead, and there were only 12 left, 12 humans left to die in 3…2…1…
Humans had no true souls. They were never eaten by the Black Widow Anansi. They were just recycled for the next world. The humans would continue to be blind deaf and dumb. They would continue to not know of gods until new religions were born out of their tiny pink brains that couldn't know the truth of what these gods did, of fighting to the death, of sacrificing their own blood for the black blood of their brains.
Their brains full of lies and frost still from the dead-set winter that was dying away, recycled for the next year. Next was spring. Next was the new world. The new god.
"The New Christ," she said, her pink tongue bloodied with the taste of a pomegranate tree she saw in the graveyard, draining the blood of the dead people who surrounded her.
She wondered if Fudo had ever liked pomegranates.
Had they ate one once? Maybe had a pomegranate tea in a coffee shop. She watched and waited while Yehl had flapped his starry wings over the silver branched graveyard, the flowers beginning to wilt in his wake.
Bloody orchids, beginning to rot with his touch! He was the bringer of death, and he knew it. He knew the cross he brought would be used to kill and used to drain the Christ's body and bring upon a new god. Yahweh was made into Yahweh for the purpose of becoming the god that led after Anansi.
Stories were godlike in nature. Anansi spilled his web for all the world to see his stories. He made an elaborate story, a story of how humans were blind to everything they saw, were deaf to everything they heard, and were dumb in everything they knew, except when it mattered to them. Even the humans who were spiritual truly didn't know what these gods dealt with. Only Blaze's mother knew. And she was dead. Her tales were collected on Anansi's web, but he had no use for it. He was still full from the dead gods he ate, except for Fudo, finely wrapped in silk, waiting for the flames of his poison begin to overtake him.
Dying dying dying he's dying the more I forget about him he's a dying god no one worships him anymore but I can still worship his memory…
Fudo, a great god, killed by the great wine-taster of all the gods. Horus used to be loved, but even Satan knew he was a despicable god who deserved to roast finely in the flames of Hell. A fine steak for all the demons to chew.
Satan had told her if she could bring him the blood of Yehl, he will bring back Fudo in the next world.
(Manipulation, his weapon of choice. He manipulated me too.)
(He only wanted chaos.)
(He could be Loki too. Satan and Loki had many similarities. Satan had multiple forms. I know this. Cause his mind is split. His mask is in the form of many masks. One with a grave smile, one with depression aching its eyes and mouth. He wanted all the gods to suffer. And he would make sure of that.)
(Aceso kept threading my spider web. Her needle was the cosmic star point that Satan had given her. She gave birth to ugly things. The ugliest thing she made was when she decided I would be a spider. With a cosmic web that trapped all the souls of Earth. I ate them, recycled them, I was a gluttonous spider, and gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins that Satan created. I had all of them when I was mad with my mania. Pride. I thought I was the greatest writer in the world. Greed. I wanted money and fame to drop to me like dew from the leaves after a spring rain. Gluttony. I ate all these souls with much relish. Wrath. I hated the doctors who denied me my new lungs. My machines to breathe. Lust. I wanted to fuck everyone in the world. Sloth. I procrastinated writing this story for a thousand years before. Envy. I wanted to be just like Hemingway. I wanted to be just as godlike as he was. But I knew I could never achieve it.)
(I told Aceso that it was time for the Needle of Faith to arrive. And she said yes, with the affirmation that after this whole ordeal, she will die.)
Drink his blood like liquor and whiskey.
The lotus flower greatly strengthened her power. She could feel Fudo inside of it, smiling, telling her to bring back his blood, to kill Horus and the Thunderbird. Wave too. Become the new Timekeeper in the world. Chip was both sides of the coin, as his smile was wicked, sharp as a razor blade, and he told her that if she could bring the blood of Sonic and keep him alive, then she will be the new Timekeeper. The new true god.
Anansi didn't know what he was doing, she said.
He continued to gulp down all the Trileptals, see the morning bleed purple and gold, see his knife inching closer to his neck, more, more he was dying! His stories had grown pale. They were dying with their age, not aging like the finest wine. There was nothing more for him to live for. She could become a sane God, a rational God, and she could create creatures with sense, make bouillons that would seep into the stew of life, make amoebas, cells, lizards, fish, birds, mammals, humans come out of that bowl she insisted to drink, and she would drink it with pleasure, as if it was a nicely cheddared clam chowder.
(It won't happen, I whispered.)
Thinking of it again, her favorite dish, still made her want to puke. She loved him, so much. Dying more by the minutes. She clutched the lotus flower between her fingertips, had let it float softly into the sky, let the light devour all the darkness and let the wings of Yehl be overtaken by bright exploding novas, and the lotus flower of Fudo's after he died, it replaced the broken moon, that was soon swept away by Anansi's broom and dustpan that he twisted to his slender fingers.
The crow fell silently to the ground as the lotus flower gleamed in the night air, slitting through the darkness that once surrounded them.
She could kill him, right now, as he only held his plastic bag of stakes in one balled up fist, smoking a cigarette in the other hand. A used-up cigarette he found on the way here.
He was dying already, slowly. Couldn't live longer in this dead Earth. The cigarette flared up, a bright bloody orange as Blaze continued to gawk at him, and he blew out curved swirls of blue smoke, about as blue as the rays of the moon.
"The demon egg," she said. She held it in the firm grip of her hand. "Do you want it or not? Hurry up before it hatches."
The cigarette died. He threw it on the grassy floor, stomped it out, and watched as the smoke dissipated between them. The spirits, the shadows, were listening, and his ears had grown cold with the sounds of their words.
Don't kill her, Shadow.
Don't.
Don't let her drink your blood.
Don't let her keep Sonic alive.
He didn't realize his blood was made of the finest Indian whiskey.
"Do you want it or not?"
Eyes so bloody, cutting the whites, bloody bloody Mary's, bloody bloody irises, staring back at the ale eyes that wished to be drunk by his seething need for a beer.
He remembered his father, drinking his Budweiser, telling him of bedtime stories, saying that he will always be a brave soldier in these dark times as the white man took away their land. The white man who never gave up and wanted to make them all their slaves.
"I'm not sure if I do want it, to be honest," he stated.
"Then why are you here?"
This goddess would be washed away with the shores of Anansi. Her mourning would soon be gone, no more of the crying for her mother, for Fudo, for her life before her father had taken it all away. He could tell in her golden eyes that the cat had nine lives, and she died three times. The murderer was him. Her mother was diagnosed with a cancer shortly after he took away her folklore. He drove her father to alcoholism. He could've been responsible for Fudo's death as well, for all he knew. He could barely remember all those years ago.
But he knew he wasn't the culprit. The truth the shadows had shown with their dark hands, cracking towards the light bloomed from the lotus moon, he wasn't responsible for it at all.
(We all are connected, I told the shadows. We all are.)
Such a small girl, she was. Hiding behind Silver's flaming sword, waiting to be protected by him. Silver acted as a true father figure to her. She worshiped him as much as the Japanese worshiped him. And he dwindled away like a fire suffocated by sand, and he soon transformed into a flower that Blaze could always hold and remember, and he became the moon.
The moon said goodnight to Blaze many times, before she was set to try to kill the bastard crow.
He loaded his gun. There was no use convincing her that he truly was on the good side, the winning side.
(Will he kill her? Aceso asked. And I wasn't sure. The raven had more sympathy for the pious than he did now.)
"Why do you believe Satan will bring back Fudo for you? He won't. He just wants a devout follower to feed off. Fudo is never coming back, you know it. And…I'm pretty sure I wasn't why the reason your mother died (the shadows whispered, whispered like the small slits of wind carolling down his quills and cheeks), your father being a loser drunk. I needed to be in this world for a reason. For things like this, Blaze. The end of the world is coming, and I'm responsible for bringing the New Christ here. Chip and Satan never liked me, but Anansi knew I was important. He messed with these events all those years to keep me alive. Anansi is dying, Blaze. He needs a new god. And Sonic is good enough for him."
"You're going to kill another god, is that it? You're a murderer, Yehl…"
She realized he knew her name, and she didn't know his.
The magic out of her folklore was sapped away, by Shadow's tongue, the raven that was always hungry, greedy, and has torn the eyes out of her skull while she was dead, she was sure that was what he wanted, to kill all the gods of the world to make himself God. Greedy, presumptuous bastard. His gun was still aimed at her forehead.
"I can forget your name, Blaze," he said.
"You want to stop me? Maybe I'll let you try anyways, because I feel bad for you. I knew your mother, Blaze. I didn't want her to die. But Anansi needed me. He wanted me to make this new world for him many years ago. He knew the humans were becoming too much for him. Wanted to drink, party, and become ignorant of his pleas for them to be good. Your mother was a good god, and she really did her job well. Your father just had a lot of hatred inside of him. That hatred turned to that rat world we had underneath this city. The rats are the byproduct of ignorance and the seeping of mental illness, the refusal to get help. Blaze, you are becoming another rat like him. Soon enough, you'll keep feeding the rats. You'll keep puking them up. Then you'll die just like your father. The rats have whittled down the bone of society in this city, with their collections of machines and their stolen medications, they're the reason Anansi is dying. They are becoming the reason he is truly the magnificent mentally ill bastard that he is. He knows he's becoming a rat too. And he has to kill himself before this world rots away."
"You're a liar, Yehl."
It was her only statement to quiet the worry inside her mind, the wires of her heart beginning to pollute with more rat feces, the craving for lead chips making her mouth drool.
"These words I speak of are nothing but the truth. I was chosen to bring the New Christ. Anansi knew his brother and I had some sort of connection, our pasts seemed to intersect somehow. The schizophrenic ramblings from both our relatives, he told me. They thought the world was going to end soon, and they were right. Not by Arabians though, and not by the government or the United States. By us. Only a few know of us now, Blaze. We have a lot of folklore, but a lot of humans still don't know who we are. Ever hear of anyone worshiping the trickster Indian Raven nowadays? And what about you, Morrigan? No one cares about you. No one cares about us, Blaze. They just want Yahweh. Anansi knows this too. That's why he hides under the guise of another god. The trickster Anansi is really the god of us all. The keeper of time and the destroyer of time and the one who decides you used it wisely is truly Satan. Go to Hell, suffer for eternity. Because you didn't use your time wisely. Feel the worms eat your vacuous face. Let the fires lick your own tongue and sap it of taste and moisture except for shit and rot. I don't know where I'm going after I die, Blaze. I'm just doing my job, and I'm sure I would be forgotten for the rest of eternity. You too. And Silver. And the other gods that died. Yahweh is a new god that's taking up all our folklore. It's why I hated him at first, but…"
He paused, his hands fumbling for another cigarette. He gripped onto another, lit it at the blue eave of the moon as it opened its petals, and he began again.
His hands shook more rapidly at the sonata and crash of his every word.
"I realized how much power he had. And influence. He cared for Miles, before he committed suicide, for as long as he could keep him. He tried to listen to other people's prayers and grant them. I never did that. I'm a selfish, trickster raven. Why the hell would I care about anyone else? I soon realized the smaller brother inside of him, Wind…he was truly God. And he kept playing this song and dance for all of us to follow. Like we were his little puppets. His strings are super-tight and could never be eviscerated. Wind was playing a tough game, having us play this movie for him, that we all want everyone watching us to pity him, and as he continues to pull the strings, make new puppets, get rid of old ones, Sonic was the puppet that he so loved, because he was his own brother. Chip is nothing more but a puppet too, Blaze. They're one and the same. The shadows have told me this, and they never have lied to me. We actually all are parts of him somehow, in his little damn story."
Watching the lotus glow near the glaring stars, he dragged his cigarette as long as he needed to. Anansi was all inside his brain, pulling out his motivations, his fears, his desires. The puppet that dangled his legs while the children laughed and watched him as he bonked Blaze on the head. Such family fun for the children. Her face continued to carry no emotion, still firm, still wishing to kill him, still wanting to believe Chip and Satan had wanted her and would keep her safe from her pain. Shadow's eyes bladed through the azure sky and he continued to speak, wanting to get a reaction out of her. The shadows were still hiding the truth from her. Because she was too blind to see. Too deaf to hear it. Too dumb to know it.
"The demon egg is about to hatch, Yehl," she said, monotone.
"It doesn't matter. Anansi is continuing to make us dance. We'll fight this monster, I'm sure we'll win, then I'm going to go and crucify Sonic like they did with Jesus. Funny, isn't it? How nothing truly matters? You live all your life, doing all you can, then suddenly, you're sick with God knows what, it could be cancer, it could be schizophrenia, it could be whatever Sonic's family has, Borderline or something, and then you learn that if you lived further on in life, nothing would change. You are only an insignificant mustard seed in this garden of life. The farmer isn't going to plant you and make you grow into a plant. He's got enough mustard plants. He's got enough faith in the palm of his hand. Faith larger than a mustard seed. Faith that is so large, you can't even hold it, no, lift it with your hands. So many people believe in God, Blaze. They believe in Sonic. In Wind. Maybe one day their religion will die out, but not in a long time. He will create more gods to do his bidding. He'll make sure Satan is checking on everyone's time and deeds. They're both partners in this little hole of life. Good and evil, working, to see if humans can behave. And they're not. Too many people are going to Hell. So we might as well throw away their lives and start all over again. Does that make sense to you, Blaze? It doesn't. I could go ahead and kill you right now, but there's no point in it. I'm letting you go."
The cigarette nearly fell from his hook-like mouth. Blaze thought of his sudden, rapid intentions towards her. He wanted to kill her one minute, then realized there was nothing more to be gained for her death. The demon inside the egg was moving slowly from its core, its yolk, and there was no sense anymore in the folklore. No gods could live, except for Yahweh. He was the only god that survived the aftermath of the self-destruction from the humans. He was the only one that could save the damning souls of the humans, those who were blind and deaf and dumb.
It felt like a crumpled autumn leaf in her fist now, the egg that shattered. It even smelled like wet autumn rain. Her eyes focused on his, the liquid inside his eyes flowing, his blood vessels nearly protruding from his sockets. Such a bloody look, she said. Such a look of someone she still finds difficult to forgive. He still murdered her mother. Still caused her father to drink. She wanted to hold onto those lies and punish Shadow with a passive-aggressive flair, but Shadow had enough of lies in the world. The shadows were showing the truth now, as the land became bright, the shadows sapped from the lotus moon, the lotus sun, the memories of Silver still fresh in her mind as she watched the golden knife plunge into his heart, from the god that delved in wine the color of god's life.
The cigarette shook, even in his mouth. Was he nervous? Very, she could tell. He continued to speak, the crescendo of the truth playing a harsh, dramatic music in her ears.
"I need to do my job and just let this universe die. Doing as I'm told. Little puppet on a string. I have no say on what will happen in this world."
He thought about aiming that gun towards himself. He could hear it click against the roof of his mouth, the galaxies ready to burst in his brain.
Decided against it. He laid the gun on the earth, as the flowers surrounded it, wondering what the device would do.
"I could end it right now for you Blaze. But you don't realize that even though I fucking hated him when I first saw him, I'm somehow convinced I have to take care of him, right?"
More tears streamed from her eyes. She knew she was going to die, no matter if she killed Yehl in the end or not. It wouldn't matter if she said the name the shadows called him. It wasn't his real name. His blood ran in vivid spurts, the red becoming a gleaming ruby color, garnets arising in his bloodstream, and he became more livid, more excited as he talked of Sonic, the god that was supposed to help him be led to the next generation of human society.
"I cared about him, the more I learned about him. The shadows told me everything while I was being killed by Horus, the tear in my neck told me everything."
"I told you everything," the gargled voice ushered, breathing in a fine spray of blue smoke from his cigarette.
"If Sonic was here right now, he'd deny these accusations. He couldn't stand to see his brother die, so he would rather die himself. And he saw him, his limp wrists and his entire skeletal body falling apart as he was crucified on that hospital bed, the tubes not enough oxygen for him to run through his blood and brain. He had to revive him. So when he died again, he couldn't see him. He could forget everything about him. And his mother and father. His mother is an alcoholic. His father is schizophrenic, and was once committed in a psych ward for a few months. The same had happened to Sonic. He planned on jumping off the bridge a few miles from his house. He faced the water that had welcomed him and wanted to snatch his life when some policemen noticed him, asked questions, and he was put on suicide watch in the hospital. That hospital was Sound Mental Health, and there he met Vector. While Vector wanted to save him, he wanted to forget about him too. Sonic was slowly dying. He knew that with his newly formed godlike powers. Sonic is dying the more the spring keeps arriving in this Earth, as you bloom each steel flower from the surface, and I'm afraid I felt like…there was something about him that I had to love about him. That he cared. He cared too much, I think."
The flowers bloomed with their glass and steel petals. They shined in the glow of the lotus. Growing larger, absorbing the moonlight, they illuminated a soft baby blue for all the sadness the humans felt. They illuminated a red the color of flames and roses and passion and lovely vignettes given to a beautiful woman, for all the madness in the world. The flowers kept glowing. They kept exploding the cemetery with color. Blaze's fingers had become hooks of flowers. Shadow's stakes became the roots at the end of a Methuselah tree. They were silver, and were imbued with life. The white that combined with the blood of Christ in candy canes. The cigarette became a rotting plant, as his neckhole ate it, its stomach wooden and hollow, a tree stump that would grow the tree of Eden.
"You'll probably die too," Blaze said.
The gun that was placed so tenderly to his frontal lobe of his brain, he took it away, and watched as the flowers nearly consumed it with their petals and blossoming leaves. They blossomed into galaxial trees. Stars as their fruit. Novas as the leaves. The black empty void as the branches and the trunk. The world was bursting into life at the seams, and he was dying, and so was Sonic, and so was Blaze.
There was no use fighting it anymore. Even Benjamin, who remained so quiet in Shadow's bag of Bible Trees, suddenly wanted to die and fade away like everyone else in the lonely world.
All the bad things were dying. The good things rose. Like God said they would. Anansi never constructed a vivid lie in his web.
"I did. I'm dying right now," Shadow said. His eyes were dull, nearly attuned to the lullaby of the Earth, as animals frothed from their surroundings, the trees singing songs they could only understand when they were about to die, the sky turned cottony blue, the same color as the scrubs in Sound Mental Health hospital.
"We are dying, slowly. Every second a person dies, did you know that Blaze?"
She wished Fudo was here. Shadow was only a stranger, yet she held his hand.
"The Earth is beautiful when it's quiet. I remembered waking up very early in the morning, at the crack of dawn while it was still an egg to feed the hungry gods in the sky. And I heard this music. This beautiful humming. The birds chirping along. The drips from the rain last night, as the dew collected on my father's lawn as he drank a Budweiser. I could hear him breathing too, so silently. When you wake up that early in the morning when nearly no one in the world is alive or awake, you hear wonderful things. You appreciate life much more. You want to do art. I was still in my pajama's. I went outside while my father stood with his long, black and brick-red legs, watching the sun gape open its huge red mouth, and he told me to just sit, and watch as the pretty things went by. He told me that white men were too busy with their electronics and their cars and their businesses to really understand the beauty of nature. My father was related to a rare Indian tribe, a long time ago. He had a big reservation for me to play in. And my mother always made me whatever I wanted in the morning, because she said the morning was my special time of the day. Every time I woke up she said, I was the sun to her. I was dawn."
"And you were…"
Their grip was tighter. Blaze had never felt more nervous, in her life.
Shadow squeezed the bag of stakes, Benjamin crushed by his bony fingers. Blood seeped from his body. He cried about his injustice caused by his relative no longer.
"I stole the dawn, Blaze. I stole the night. I stole the afternoon, the stars. I was God's right-hand person to making the light. The raven brought everything to man. The Raven is wise, wiser than Man, and had brought fire to Man, and weapons to Man, and brought Man out of their clam shells on the beach of Seattle. I stole those things, I stole them from Satan. And that's why he is angry with me. Satan is proud of his little maiden Aceso, using her as his puppet, as she threads all the ugly things in the world. She tried to make nice things when Satan brought her that hell of Death, my supposed uncle, but she is planning to make a very nice thing for us soon. A brand new universe. All her own. Her first beautiful thing made from her needle that I implanted in Sonic's cheek. She struck a deal with Anansi that she will create nice things in her universe, but Satan is going to try to kill her, after she gives birth to this universe. I can't help her. Aceso would simply be a corpse among the stars. After she makes the most beautiful thing any being could make with a sewing needle and thread."
Blaze's fist tightened. The demon egg's shell rustled in her hand, but the folklore was a pointless endeavor that she learned was created by Satan to keep his demons aligned and to grant a reward to the gods for doing the work he didn't want to do. It was a meaningless thing that kept her alive for a few more moments when she knew the death of the world would come, and she wanted to die already, she wanted to die, her eyes seeped, her teeth chattered through the cold of the dawn, and her grip on his hand was so tight Shadow thought she would crush it. Her black eyes bled through her corneas, and she could feel all the emotion beginning to take her over. Crying tears as if she had mascara. She wanted to puke. She thought of the clam chowder that Fudo recommended for her and she puked. She loved him. And she no longer hated Shadow, but yet could not bear to love him. Although she wanted to.
Aceso, her friend. She was going to die from her false friend.
"Vector is a lot like Sonic in a few ways he doesn't realize. He couldn't bear to see the death of his father. His father had cancer and he could never help him. His mother never truly loved him. Maybe Vector's father was a god too, because he was very wise. But the shadows never told me. It's another mystery I can't solve. Vector held onto Espio because he reminded him of his father in some ways, and he was obsessed with being an influential musician. He thought the god powers would make him loved, like his father was. But it never happened. He became homeless. Espio too, because he couldn't stand to see Vector suffer alone after the hospitalization. Vector didn't know that he tried to eat someone who was so close to him, that he wanted to swallow his entire personality whole, and let his suffering become his own and dissolved away."
"What about Horus?"
She wanted to kill the relatives of Horus, his brother and sister, and the wretched drunken bird that killed her love, years ago. His blood would be mixed in with his own. She held the hilt of the sword while still holding onto Shadow's hand. She couldn't love him. Not yet.
"Horus is dead, Blaze."
His blood could not be stained on her sword. The blood she wished to drink. His hatred becoming her own.
"Satan killed him a few days ago. He just used him as a puppet, a sacrifice to show that he had such power over us. But no one cared that Horus died. None of us. But he killed Fudo. Fudo was actually another friend of mine Blaze, and I hated to see him go. He told me about you. He said he loved you and even wanted to make a vow to you. It never happened. But he became the moon. He became the guiding light in all the dark moments in your life. And he will shine in the darkest moment, until you are recycled for the next generation. What will you be in the new world? I'm not sure. But I hope you will be loved, and you will have a happy life. I'm sorry about your mother. I'm sorry about your father. I'm sorry about Silver. I didn't know they hurt you so much for you to be a goddess that thrives on war, but you will no longer drown in rats and hate anymore."
The tears streamed further, into a river on the earth, and soon, more life bloomed around her sadness, as the rivers let the animals drink, and let the flowers glow and grow. Her emotions fed into the world, and Shadow still held on her hand, still listened to her heart that needed to be cradled, and he told her more secrets she wished the shadows would take away in darkness.
"I wasn't responsible for killing your mother."
"Horus' brother and sister are Wave and Storm. Wave replaced the role of her father after he was institutionalized in the same hospital Sonic and Vector were in. He was driven to obsessive-compulsive madness after Jet began to drink and drop out of school and no longer take care of their ailing and soon-to-be-dead mother. Storm was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome with a near-genius IQ, then when he leaves Wave, he is lobotomized by an icicle, and he becomes mentally retarded," the hole in his neck continued to speak, telling more truths that Blaze never wanted to hear. "Horus was a selfish god. But Wave and Storm are trying to take care of each other. They try to get by. Vector forgot about them, but he knew he had to sympathize with them, because he never had the same kind of happiness they had in many years. Wave wanted to kill Sonic for taking Storm's demon egg, but Sonic granted her a prayer that Wave and Storm would be alright for one winter night. He sympathized with them too. And Miles wasn't a god. He would never be a good god. But he wished to be a martyr for committing suicide, when he only saw religion as his way out, but was still plagued with madness. Sonic realized gods can't change the chemicals in people's brains, and their own. Miles never got what he wanted. He wanted pity from his parents, and the school children who teased him. Miles is forgotten. He is buried, however, and Sonic blessed his soul. Maybe that's the best gift Miles could ever get in his life. A blessing from an angel, and the path to a better life in the new world. Even Jesus can't save everyone."
Wave and Storm saw the city become overrun with reeds and plants, as the silver and emerald of Seattle soon died away, the technology that she used to love become ghosts that the rats had worshiped, more animals walked in the traffic of dead bodies as they floated up to the sky, up Anansi's web, to recycle their souls. To purify them with his venom.
Wave's face, constructed of dirt, of stress, of melancholy, and of tears, she held on Storm's hand, as he asked her what was going on.
She couldn't bear to answer his question. She knew what it was. She heard the other gods speak before she climbed up the bridge with her boots stomping in the rain and mud. She could hear God crying. He was crying, and she could catch His tears in her mouth.
"What's going on, sister?" he asked.
So much was going on, she wanted to answer. So much is going on and we aren't invited to the culmination of all this birth and death.
She was dying slowly, each step she took. The rain drenched her feathers, her eyes carried a sense of defeat, that she took care of her brother for so long, that she couldn't protect him anymore.
Jet was gone. She could tell. And she couldn't save him from his own death. By killing him and committing fratricide. Never loved her brother, she said. But yet she wanted to be the one to kill him rather than have a passive-aggressive death wish on him.
Your dreams never came true when you were passive-aggressive. But they did. And she wished to hide her face in the shadows, in the latrines of the puddles in the Earth. They were just as silver as the bathtubs she saw her father in, getting hydrotherapy when she was still a nymph.
My father never had psychiatric problems never he never did I can assure you he never did I know Jet hadn't poisoned him I know neither did Storm or our mother I was the perfect child I would be ascended to heaven I know I will be I know God will capture me with His celestial hands and take me and Storm to heaven and then we could drink Dixie cups of Kool-Aid and watch as the angels pluck their lightning bolts from the sky to strike those who sullied their name and see our dead dog Patches and see the angel who helped me the angel that…
Storm lifted his large, silver feathered hand on her shoulder. He could tell she was crying. She could've been laughing, but he knew she had nothing to laugh about anymore.
The storm ushered on, in small, rainy whispers. The Earth continued to grow, to rise from the Lotus Moon, and Wave was too blind to see all the beauty that happened before you died, because she was too scared. Too scared to let go of Storm.
She heard of the phrase "To reign in Hell is better to serve in Heaven".
She wondered if it was true. She could see Jet. She could watch him bleed for eternity. And she could atone for her sins. For what they all did to mother. For what they all did to their father, who she knew was dead now.
The gears of the machine slowly turned. The clocks ticked away, counting down their final minutes. She could imagine a loudspeaker played all over the Earth as the last remaining survivors and the gods had cried and mourned, a kind, chirpy voice saying, "You only have an hour left on this world, shoppers! You might start considering finishing up your amends and say goodbye to your family before we close down for many millenniums!"
She could feel her soul slipping through the cracks, the bleeding scars of her body. Through her eyes and mouth. She wanted to stay with Storm during her last hour. She had to set him free, a firefly remaining in its jar for so long, it nearly suffocated.
He was a Thunderbird by heart. His name even said he was a seething, pearly glowing bird made of ivory bones and the blue winter eyes her father had that she could remember clearly, when she knew him all those years, before he left to get sanitized.
"Storm," she said.
Cold, shivering, he wished he stole a jacket while they walked here. "What is it, little sister?"
"I want you to turn into your god form, go as high in the sky as you can, and never talk to me again. Everything is going to be alright. I will be up there with you. Things will be okay. I promise you."
He huddled to her for warmth. Wanted to remain the last day with her, and he was stupid, but he couldn't believe that everything would be okay, and that she would be up in heaven. He desperately wished he could believe in those lies, but the world was dying, he could tell, his heart resonated with everything in the earth, with every animal, and he knew the world was dying.
"Please Storm, just do it."
Storm never wanted to leave her. She kept running from him. He kept trying to catch up. Her anger rose. She kept screaming for him to go away, go up in the sky and go to heaven with her. He pleaded to stay with her. Running again. Running, they kept running. They were nearly at the cemetery. Told him to go to heaven. The opposite of "go to hell". Running again. Wave ran so far away that Storm couldn't catch up to her. She said she would be up there with him. It was the only way. Go to heaven. God bless you. Go to heaven.
Wave soon disintegrated into the night. All alone, he wondered why she wanted to leave him. Why the world was tearing itself apart from its sewn threads. He wished to know everything in the world. Wished to gain knowledge about the birdlike condition, of why their father had left them, why their mother didn't care after she died that Jet spat in her face and she wasn't burned to ashes like their dog, why Jet chose to become an alcoholic, why Wave tried so hard to keep the family together when there was no point in keeping it together. He wished to know why his sister felt responsible for everything.
He would do what she said. He would go to heaven. He would meet their dead dog. Their dead mother. Their dead father. They would all come together in angel garb and sing and play songs on the harp. Have little wings on their backs even though they already had wings.
The rain deepened in the world. The world was drowning, just like the tale of Noah's Ark that he was told when he was a child. His father kept saying if he believed in God, believed in Jesus' ability as much as a tiny seed that he saw no one plant before in his life, then he would come, and bless you. And they would become a happy, Christian family. Even Jet could come to heaven. They had all of Jesus' blood he could drink.
Storm turned into the Thunderbird with screeches that pierced the eyes and skin, his talons made from the bones of electricity, the eyes that sizzled and cracked every time anyone looked at them, and his wings popped the air, the crackling of lightning striking the gray skies of morning, and he cried for his sister, he screamed her name as he become the greatest roar of lightning that the Earth had ever experienced, and he split the world in two halves.
The only way to create something so beautiful, truly, was to destroy everything you had.
I understood this lesson, very well.
Blaze, oh poor little Blazie, her earth had been torn like paper, she could no longer hold Shadow's hand. She no longer had comfort. Her eyes continued to shed tears as much as her blood. Shadow carried the Methuselah stakes, he continued to be emotionless of the whole ordeal.
Blaze, have you ever noticed that when you cry, you create more life for me?
But I have to destroy them. That's just how I work.
Shadow shouted over the rumbling and seething of lightning in the distance. Blaze could barely hear him. The thunder continued to scream for his sister.
"I never killed your mother. Other circumstances killed your mother. Your father did. He had a lot of hatred for her. So much hatred, he brewed rats inside his stomach. He craved disgusting things to eat. He gave her cancer for just being so hateful. His negativity, his depressed views, his alcoholism, his denial of seeing these wonderful things around us, that's what just killed her."
More words were gurgled from him. The thunder grew more vociferous, more dangerous as he killed the trees made of silver threads, the golden wired flowers, and the plants that devoured all the love in the world.
Sonic
Listened
Wishes
He said
Mother
Can't let her go
See her
Irish cause
Immigrants came
To America
Rats carried
God knows if you will
You can't die I will
I will
I will
I will
Make sure
You're okay
More seconds passed by did his words sounded like the choking of his neckhole. Shadow felt he could no longer speak. His mouth was becoming threaded, with black stitches, and he tried to pry his lips free with his nimble fingers, but he was more of a puppet by Satan's control. The New Christ couldn't be revived, he said.
The Devil's touch resonated in his body. The blackness that curled inside him, the helix that killed all the kindness in every inch of his body. The gun was in his grip, the trigger close to being pulled in Shadow's head. I want to kill you, Shadow said. I want to kill you. I want to kill you, for making my first life miserable. My second life miserable. My third life even worse.
I cannot be killed. Evil cannot be killed. It forever lives in every part of the universe.
There is deep evil inside of you, and I know how you can make it go away.
The gun was nearing his temple again, the galaxy bullets that the Evil Self inserted before the flowers had taken them away. He watched the Earth shrink as he moved perpetually in space, Satan's grip on the gun next to his frontal lobe so calm, nearly precise.
Sonic was out there, he thought. He will be crucified. Satan is just trying to stop me. He's just trying to stop me from creating The New Christ, the New God. I got the grenade in my cloak. I could kill us both, but where would Sonic go? Anansi couldn't do anything. He's too busy in his cosmic web, crying. Watching the sands of his red hourglass bleed through his body, see the grains and threads of the universe slowly drain from his grasp…
He unraveled the threads slowly with his tongue, and tried to speak. Satan continued to gaze at him, with his slit eyes, the snake eyes that threatened to consume his body whole.
You took everything from me.
"I stole those beautiful things from you so you couldn't ruin them further. You ruined the night. You made such a tender time for me and made it into a time where the humans could fuck and drink and kill and steal. You still have your mark on those things, you bastard. You still have teenagers drinking and fucking the night away. You still have those rile sex acts, those murders, those devious things the blind deaf and dumb people do at night. You wanted the blind deaf and dumb to no longer care about gods. You wanted them to go to your kingdom of brimstone and maggots. But there's some value in those blind deaf and dumb people. When they realize that there is truth and spiritual things going on with God's fingers in their life and the prayers that are answered to only a few lucky amount of people, they are no longer blind deaf and dumb. They will know. And they become just as good as a vessel for Anansi to take care of than anyone who believed in the beginning. You never had to be a devout follower for the humans to go to their own version of heaven. If they just believed…"
The mustard seed. Yes, right. But that faith isn't strong enough. Gods need more than just faith, my friend.
The threads were pulled up to his tongue, to his mouth, to the neckhole as he tried to usher in more words of hope, but that hope was dying along with the planet. All hope had to die, as Anansi soon cried his tears, as they kept rolling along with the sea, and yes my friends, I too am dying. And I felt even with the faith of only a million people, it couldn't keep my sadness drained away. I kept writing this whole battle between them, had kept trying to figure something out with my mind, but Shadow had kept resisting, even when Satan had told him that the lies were real, and he always wanted to believe in lies ever since his uncle had forced him to eat his parents in that other deceased timeline, he said he could bring it back. He could bring it back to make him suffer, to toy with his emotions, but Shadow had lunged towards him before he could fire his gun, his fist about to touch the scaly and reptilian face of the devil, then the trigger was pulled, the bullet that once it stroke him, it made his organs melt, his godlike body dying, that the scorn of humans, their unbelief at a raven trickster god who took away Satan's night and stars was still alive and still cared about these humans, rotting away his flesh, with his own touch of sin inside these bullets. The holy fire of sin that made Shadow feel ashamed, the powers of manipulation from his weapons and words driving him to a near state of cataclysmic depression.
He still had a job to carry, he told himself. He had to usher forth the New Christ, the needle that Aceso held in her thin little fingers.
Hurry! Aceso cried, as she frayed the edges of my old cobwebs. Hurry!
His body decayed more as the seconds elapsed when the lotus flower canvassed the sky, and birthed the golden yews of the sky, the eaves of the pink and the branches of the purple, the veins of my heart, visible in that morning sky.
The left arm was useless. It limped alongside with him. The stakes still held firmly in his grip in his other hand, the silver roots shining on the frost of the stars and sun.
He could still smell fire, he still felt the burn of sin inside his body. He could see Aceso's prying eyes as she prayed to him, as he prayed to Yahweh, that she could create something wonderful with her gifts.
She knew she would be killed by Satan. But the Plath effect was enough to let her be okay with her inevitable death.
(Me too I said. Me too.)
Satan held the gun, pin-point accuracy, his claws icy, nearly colossus-like in his stature, the starseas crashing against him, the cracks and flaws inside him large like the Liberty Bell hole, and he let Shadow go into the abyss, his one arm necrotic, his eyes dulled of their fire as he begged for Sonic to come, to become his Jesus.
Because he cared. He cared too much about his suffering.
(I could see the trigger being pulled, so slowly, Satan smiling, beetles resting in his jaws and eyeholes.)
The bullet was ready to split the air and bleed inside his brain. Shadow walked with a lurching gait, to the blue hedgehog that walked miles ahead of him, trying to find the meaning of being a much-worshiped god. Sonic was very sick, and his footsteps were weak, as much as his own. The cystic fibrosis I spread to him was killing him, his lungs collapsing under his soft skin.
The hedgehog walked, nursing his dead arm that was ready to drop from his flesh, the lotus opened its petals slowly, light spreading to all the corners of the sky's canvas. God had painted coruscate flashes of color, ribbons of light spreading from his fingertips, the violets and yellows all viscid and vivid. The reds looking like the holy blood of a babe's. The blues the eyes of my sadness, oh pretty sadness, stare at Shadow, your foster-father, thank him for making you into a beautiful thing. A beautiful, quiet sadness! A painted malady of my manic-depressive state.
He had to kill him when the sun was rising. Sacrifice his holy blood for the good of civilization. The babies of the next generation. The pregnant mothers of the next generation. The next cocks from men of the next generation, seeping of seminal fluid. The next teenagers deciding to fuck. The next children who don't know anything about procreation and assumed only storks brought babies from the sky like rainfall. A facile lie to keep the children occupied from the parent's sex life.
The gun still didn't fire. Satan waited until Shadow could finally grab a breathful of air with his tiny fists of gasps, and the gun was nearing closer to his temple (somehow someway I said. I wasn't sure of what was happening. I downed my Trileptal. I licked some LSD. Wasn't sure wasn't sure…). The trigger closer to click. The devil laughed, at the errors of a god.
"You're Satan," he said. Another gasp of air filled his lungs. This much oxygen he was once deprived of made him wish for another cigarette. "You can just send me to Hell if you wanted to. I don't know why you're taking the hard way and wasting your time just holding the gun to my head and not firing. It's not like I loved this world enough to keep living on it. All I care about is if Sonic will be okay. You can't kill him. If anyone is going to kill him, I will. From doing my duty. His brother can't have that satisfaction. I'm not letting him have it."
His web could barely string together all of his wonderful meats that lied in wait for him. Taken an extra dose of Trileptal. To keep the creativity up (I can't believe I'm dosing myself with more madness taking some extra LSD while doing this story and drinking you gotta be crazy I wouldn't do anything like that to myself would I would I would I…)
The gun turned into a blade and stabbed Yehl through his brain. His metallic wings grew high, a skeletal structure that once was nothing but a skeleton, but it soon grew into another form of a crow, an albicant crow with hard-set blue eyes, its wings the clouds of the sky, the eyes keeping the God's universe inside himself. His beak had carried the blood of so many lost souls, prying their eyes of the truth.
(I lie! I lie! I lie! Is it true? Do we feed constantly on lies? In this society you do! I see my mother's breast opening up for me, a monster grinning with bloody teeth and bloody tongues like Mother Dawn, like the milk she was languid with, her body possibly unable to hold so many miracles. Mother? God? Couldn't be! Father was the Mad Hatter! She was the March Hare!)
Its heart had shown, had pecked underneath its skin, and the crow roared like a tarantula. The wings were the broken shards of the moon, and up from its mouth, up! Up! Up! Was the dead bodies of all the rats that had been vanquished by the sleight hand of God! Mighty wisdom! The ignorance that displayed in these deplorable rats! The eyes could watch the hedgehog crawling through the streets of Seattle to Harboview Medical Hospital, getting one last chance of life, to die in the same land his brother had oh his brother, oh his brother art thou in heaven, glory be to peace with all these disgusting creatures…
The bullets fired, novas and galaxies showered in its eyes! Vivacious flowers they had become, with water as petals, with fire as leaves, with the earth turned asunder with gold! Things were swirling around them both, the liquid world that became ruddy pink, a vibrant yellow, the sky soon shattering under Shadow's fist, attempting to smash Satan's head to the pavement, his brain still in-tact, some blood collecting on his fingers as he desecrated my heart (oh, my heart! It beats no longer with passion and joy, but sadness and ache!) The veins pumped more blood, but my face turned blue, as blue as Sonic was, as blue as the Earth, oh I missed my older brother, why did I have to detach from him! Shadow ran. Yes, he ran. Yes. He kept running to the dark corners of space, Satan firing more galaxies as the bullets zoomed past him, sucking up all the debris and the ruins the humans created before they died, and the planet was slowly crumbling up like a piece of paper, a paper heart I had replaced with my real heart, as I was a writer who couldn't deal with these stories I shed with my eyes and chest anymore.
The red wine tasted salty on my tongue as I sipped it. Tasting like the Seattle sea. How I remembered going there with my brother, before my father slipped into the shadows of Sound Mental Health, staying there for months, not receiving a single letter from him.
I don't care about my father. I never have. When schizophrenia claimed him as a statistic, I no longer associated with him. He went into the waves and showed us how he could swim on his back, with the salt burning through his quills. Mother kept drinking champagne as we swam. She kept it in a little flask around her neck, glittering as much as the silver sea.
I always felt my brother was a savior. I once traversed through the waves, seeing where they would take me. I wanted to see the many sea creatures under the ocean. I didn't care that my eyes burned underneath the tides. I wanted to be an undersea diver one day. So many career choices. I watched as the waves took me further to the abyss of Seattle's sea, I drank the sun in long gulpful's as I was rained down with rays, I waved to my brother, who told me to be careful, cause the cystic fibrosis made me too weak to swim so far. He told me if I went any further, I would drown.
I didn't listen.
I kept hearing the hungry cries of gulls in the desolating air. The sun kept burning my back. The dragon underneath me slithered underneath my legs, I could see its crescent teeth waiting to chew through me, the blood ready to seep through the sea, the rivers running with my life. Like Jesus' life. The white and red. I wondered if the white was actually cum. It could've been the semen his father never used on the Virgin Mary.
Shadow ran, I remembered telling you earlier.
I can't get too off-track, I believe.
He dashed to the ends of space. Seattle soon evaporated under the stress of the galaxies. Shadow still had his abyssal grenades in his cloak. He could've threw them against the faces of all the stars that watched and stared and shined with so much holiness, but Satan continued to run faster on his goat legs, his quills green, the eyes jaded slits. He still looked like him. But the quills soon gathered with the frost of the winters of space. His torso was becoming more animal-like than he was. The goat legs and the demonic tail. He could imagine him with a pitchfork now. Satan, Shadow learned, had truly no weapons. Except manipulation and evil. His gun was the only thing he had. It would soon run out of bullets. But readers, I planned for him to keep one bullet and throw the rest away. That bullet was faulty. It was only good for the self, and Satan had a strict policy against that.
I'm tired.
He kept running.
I kept getting tired.
These lugubrations aren't helping my mind. I can feel the dark crevices of depression opening and sucking me in. Sonic, with the bowl of my mother's slop on the floor, trying to shove it up my nostrils as if I was on feeding tube…oh, were those the days.
He threw the gun away.
Satan had flashed a smile, black, ghoulish, with spiders and beetles crawling through his plaque-ridden and masticated teeth by rats, as many rats lived inside Satan, and he asked Shadow, What is your real name?
(Couldn't tell him, he thought. He would steal my powers. He knew anyways, I was sure, Satan was almost as God-like as Anansi. He knew everyone's names who were about to enter the flickering black flames of Hell.)
It was already black, but I could tell the world was becoming darker. The black turned into a black that was never saw by humans, except when they faced their worst fears.
The dragon kept coming closer.
I saw that blackness, my friends. I saw it in the sea dragon's mouth, as it tried to take me away to the deepest tundras of the sea, away from my family. I called out to Sonic as I was driven to the jeweled trenches of the sea, seeing the sapphire surface before my very eyes.
Was God truly a jeweler? I thought to myself.
Did he fashion the Earth into the most beautiful jewel anyone saw, and then as time grew, the jewel was soon run to the ground by the humans and animals, and eventually, we all had our sapphires and dioptases and fluorites and topazes underneath the earth for us to discover, and oh! do humans just love jewels.
The sky was made of jewels too. A jewel that changed color. An opal.
Special kind of opal.
I could feel my life sapping out of my body, as the dragon clamped through my legs, and I thought if I even survived this, I would be paralyzed. My hands weren't taken from me at least I told myself. My hands were special. I could draw and paint and write with them. I couldn't imagine an even worse fate. Either that or suffering through severe brain damage. Or being blind.
I blacked out, the blackest black I ever saw. I could feel warm hands and a warm breath breathing through me. I could hear more seagulls fighting over food. The swig of my mother's flask. My father swimming on his back and laughing. Nothing seemed to change in that course of time. Sonic only knew. He knew how bloody my carcass seemed to be. He told me my leg was bloody, there was some damage on it, but the doctors could fix it.
Father swimming on his back. Mother drinking through her flask. It was as if they were stopped in mid-motion. That what happened to us didn't matter. They were stuck in only one time frame, only one scene in an animator's cartoon. I felt sick. I wanted to throw up. I wished Sonic could just take me to the doctor, but he didn't have enough strength to carry me. He couldn't drive. Mother never acknowledged I was hurt. Father talked about how the sun got nearer to the Earth every year until eventually the Earth would totally be absorbed by the sun's fire. I wanted to cry. Sonic told me we will get there, and he tried to walk me there, with my leg feeling like a million swords had sliced through my skin. I wanted to scream. Scream for everyone to pay attention to me. That I was hurt. That I was alive. But Sonic told me to keep calm. We'll make it, he said.
Mother continuing to belch and drink by the sea.
Father continuing to listen to his police scanner, hearing about a man who had a fire in his home and had to be rescued by the fire department. Glad I'm not him, he said.
I never wanted to be more safe than this moment. I wanted to just be with my brother, to absorb the sun in my skin, to let all the blood suck back into my body like a sponge, to have the stitches tear through and keep the wounds in place, like I was a teddy bear with a torn leg full of fluff. No one at all looked at us and asked if we needed help. My damage, my fractured leg, seemed to only be supernatural, that no regular human could identify it. Only Sonic. Sonic knew what happened. He knew that a dragon had come and decided to eat my leg as if it was a mince-pie.
I watched the ravens crowd around the trees as the blood filtered from my leg to the sidewalk. I panicked that I was going to die. Sonic told me that I wouldn't and I would be okay. Yet the pain made tears seethe through my eyes. I told him that the only one who could help us through this ordeal was God.
A god who could understand our plight. I could feel the dragon's saliva searing my leg apart, make a hole in the whole ligaments, and I could see that I would lose my leg, and not a single doctor, or anyone else, would care enough to help me.
Father still listened to his police scanner as the dusk crevassed the eyes of God. He heard of reports of complaints about a man's house, that it smelled too much of rotten turnips, and she heard screams in the middle of the night erupting from the home. Police investigated, they said, as my mother watched the sun dive further in the sea, and they saw no evidence of the woman's claims come to fruition.
I knew that was a lie. Somehow, I knew. He gave them a hundred-dollar bill under their noses and they sniffed it and liked the smell of riches. Was the man truly rich? He kept his money safe, and never spent it, except when the police came over to assess the claims people made about his rotten fetid home.
The system works.
I don't know where I was going with this. I kept getting off track. Something about my leg.
The sun had many tendrils reach my face. The Mother Squid of Prosperity, as it swam in the sea.
I could hear the sounds of hellfire emerging from the sidewalks, the smell of coal and burning carcasses. Sonic couldn't tell, but I could tell how many bodies had roasted in Hell like an open fire. 712,645,250,666,666,666,666,666,666,666,666,666,666…
He wasn't the devil anymore. But a fey-like creature. A satyr like Pan. Play your little flute Pan. Play it and be happy. Dance! I could see his little furry toes dance before me, as he told me the benefits of signing a contract. My leg would be free from the clutches of another god. I would go back to live with my family. I could live for many years as long as I absorbed all the folklore. And then he asked me if I could do a job for him.
Your brother, back there? He asked me.
Sonic wasn't aware of my conversation with a little fairy in my eyes, grinning like a knife under the hot moon.
Your brother…he's important for our cause, he told me.
A new god, I learned.
We were overthrowing the old God, cause he was too old-fashioned. His beard was as white as bitter winter in February, as immaculate as Fudo's, and his fingers were like old tree roots as he smoked from his peace pipe. His eyes could barely see much of anything. He gave the Republicans power when he was blind to know they were the evil ones. He couldn't see that children needed to outlive their elders. He couldn't see that the brilliant shouldn't suffer from such thick black maladies like I suffered through.
The Old Testament was replaced by the New Testament upon the birth of Jesus Christ. Then he became the new God, treating his followers with kindness and love. But Jesus and the Holy Ghost, they were becoming too wrinkly and deceased to rule over the new world, our new saturnine America.
I would become God, for just a short while. Like how the old God was wrathful and vengeful for what seemed to be only a few thousand years.
My brother, my Christ, would teach me the valuable way to be kind. To be kind to these humans.
(I shivered, my heart shuddered thinking of my brother caring for all these humans. But my brother! He did care! He cared for even people like me! People like Miles! He wanted to care for Shadow! People who were so lost, so confused! A perfect God! A kind God! I was only his former shell, my metamorphosis to a wonderful, pristine being that had colorful wings and skin made of Persephone-like beauty. Bring winter to Earth! She was the main reason Seattle suffered for so long on February…)
I see spiders eating my fingers. Not my writing hand, I told them.
Shadow ran across the universe as much as he could with his desecrated arm, through the silhouettes of other planets, through the stars created by Brahma and the other gods that were dying slowly under my breath. Shadow had raised the Methuselah stake and he whispered to Sonic that could be heard through many light years, "Don't go."
Sonic didn't care for anything else anymore. He didn't care for the people who followed him. He didn't care for me. The spiders are biting my heart. I can't take this. Sonic, my brother, I can't describe this to you when you see this story after I'm gone…
The fairy told me all about the monarchy of gods. How there was a king ruling over all the other gods. I was going to be that king, temporarily, until I was overthrown by my brother.
Why? Cause he was foolish enough and kind enough to be God.
He desired my bloodlust for power! I thought writing my own worlds, to be trapped under the navy blue seas in my wall and have my mother leave my favorite meal for me by my doorstep as I wrote was enough power I would ever experience. Controlling these characters to do my bidding, having them kill other people as if I was a voice in a schizophrenic's head, to help one another, to tell their heroes they had done their good deeds and they shall be rewarded. I couldn't think of anything more godlike. My mother gave me that luxury to have my last few months as comfortable as possible when my leg instantaneously recovered. I only had three months to live, my doctor said. Three months to write my novel of the raven, the novel that I'm writing, right now.
Those months took a long time. More than three months. December I worked so hard, February I worked even harder, March…
March is where I will make my final mark as a writer. As a painter writes their signature on a piece, I knew I would make my voice be heard in this story.
Do you hear that? That's my heart beating inside these pages. All of these sentences, my friends, are veins. The same veins that were in the sky just a moment ago before the sky was fractured. All of these sentences and punctuation marks and the flow of my blood, they all have an intricate system. An intricate system of time flowing through here, my blood, on this page, imprinted by your fingers. This is the only copy to have my blood and veins as you hear the gentle ushering of my heart for you to hear and to see and feel, my body is yours as you are reading this story. This is my mind you're dealing with. My heart and soul, waiting for you to hold, has come to you with these words uttered by my fingers, as I type at this typewriter like a piano, hearing the keys ring in audacious harmony, and Sonic, I see you, facing Shadow. I can see the tension in your eyes, your fists balling up like tired cats, your eyes gleaming as if they became stars in this universe you were in, and Shadow…well, I liked him. Honestly I do. But I can't forgive him to kill you, brother.
He asked you if you loved him.
You don't know how to answer him, but he said when he became a god, he couldn't hate anyone. His heart was too big to hate. He couldn't even hate me for what I did to him. If Shadow wanted to kill him, he didn't want to hold a grudge. Hate him during his infinitesimal afterlife. Sonic barely knew anything about Shadow's past. But it would hurt him for a very long time. His uncle would be immortal in his memory, even if he was no longer existent in this plane they were in.
Sonic asked him his real name.
Istu. My real name is Istu, he said.
Can I ask you a question?
(Shhh, the universe said, as the stars rotated slowly, as the sun's no longer glimmered and stared.)
What's that?
You're supposed to be Judas, aren't you? But I don't remember Judas being Indian.
Want to know some interesting facts about ravens?
(Of course you do.)
Ravens are one of the most intelligent animals in the world. They actually make their own tools and toys to play with by constructing materials that the humans left, or bundles of sticks and twigs.
Ravens are another species of bird that are known to engage in play. Sometimes, if you look closely, you can see ravens playing by rolling down car windows and tugging animals' tails.
As humans can completely forget about the appearance of a human and how they treated them, ravens never will forget how another human has treated them. If you fed them, they will approach you, possibly wondering if you will give them more food. If you are cruel to them, they will warn others to never approach you.
The raven that Istu was, he remembered Sonic. He remembered him as a fool, but a fool that was willing to sacrifice his own life for his brother. As dissociative and as crazy and even as bored and childish he was, he couldn't truly hate the ones who wronged him.
I thought he hated me for all the neglect he suffered from his childhood. He couldn't hate the doctors, not even the ones that had their snouts punched by him. Istu knew he had a heart, another heart that beats in unison with mine in these pages, and as he drove one stake into his left wrist, Sonic stuck to a star that was shaped like a crucifix, he kissed him.
(The Kiss of Betrayal that was ultimately good for the world. As Jesus rose up and atoned all the humans for their sins…)
The needle poked through, little by little. He could feel it lacerate through his skin.
Sonic never felt as alive as he ever did with the kiss, even when his blood was streaming from the 1,000 year old tree bark to the ends of space.
Why are you doing this.
He drove the second stake through his right wrist. More blood ran a river through the shattered Earth.
Why are you doing this.
The needle came out further, a silver point that was as sharp as the Seattle Space Needle. (I laughed to myself, it literally was a Space Needle. It was growing from his fleshsoil, the galaxy starting to be birthed…)
(Watch children, watch the baby being born…)
Please answer me.
Istu…
Please answer me.
Don't call me that name anymore.
The third stake, tearing through his right leg.
(The Space Need was almost completely out! Take deep breaths, Sonic! Push!)
My brother screamed, he cried like the infant he was back at Sound Mental Health! He begged him to stop. He begged that he will love him through the eternity of the universe, have their blood turn a frosty gold like the finest wine, and he kept shouting his name, he kept shouting at him to stop!
Istu…
Istu…
Istu…
That was the name of the raven in my other novel.
His name was Istu.
Shadow was the embodiment of that raven. He was a character I molded to life with my mythril clay.
Istu…
Istu…
Istu…
You're the character in my brother's book, right? And he created you?
Originally, my dear readers, Shadow was chopped up to pieces and his uncle's rats ate his remains. But I made his uncle grow an ounce of sympathy and jealousy from his father who was level-headed and was a great father and husband to his wife, and he let Shadow live and tried to raise him. I gave him a tragic backstory instead. I gave him a reason why he became my raven.
As Kurt Vonnegut said, "Give your character a motivation to want something. Even if it's just a glass of water."
Shadow wanted lies, yes, but he also wanted someone to feel close to. He never could get close to anyone, and at that moment, when I made him sympathize with Blaze, and feel bad for my brother's suffering…
Shadow had a heart after all. Despite many claims that he never had one.
Shadow said, I want to die with you.
Istu…
I can't do this anymore, but I have to keep doing it. Otherwise there won't be any other world for us to live in.
The stake lancinated Sonic's left leg.
Aceso gripped the now placenta needle, and through Sonic's flesh in his mouth, the teeth that was aligned to speak the truth for so many people who looked up to him, and with her deft hands, her nimble hands, she created a brand new universe! She created blue stars with blue thread! Red novas with red thread! She made a new dress for all the new God to wear. He lied as his teeth was sewn away from his mouth and were made into planets and stars, and his tongue was the new sun for the new world. Her thread and her expert hands tore through his body, and like a mortician, she took his non-beating heart and made the new planet. And it became a new form of him, as his body hung like a hock of meat from a butcher, Aceso knowing with her nymph hands she had to be killed for her genius.
(I am yours, she said. She closed her eyes, eternally. Satan drove the blade of his claws through her brain. Did he regret it? Yes, Satan had an ounce of regret, as her blood covered the stars and the galaxies. Her fingers, however, Satan decided they would be preserved in his little collection in Hell. He also had Hitler's eyes, Stalin's ears, and Einstein's brain (he coined the creation of the atomic bomb, he claimed). Ha! He may think he has the collection of blind deaf and dumb, but Einstein never was dumb I remarked! Just autistic!)
The sun boiled his hot flesh, as Shadow knew all he had to do was raise the star above the sun, and leave him to die, until three days later, he was reborn.
He asked me where his gun was at, and I told him I kept it, and I could not allow him to die, otherwise Satan would get angry with me.
"He was behind all of this after all, wasn't he?"
His eyes grew dark, caustic blood that was darker than Sonic's blood that flowed and pollinated the new Earth, in its green silky threads.
Evil always had to have a place in the world.
Without evil, no one would know what good even was. Or why heroes deserved to be respected.
There was good out of all of this, I told him. The new world that both him and Sonic would be a part of. They could make their own gods, their own folklore, their own people (but they had free will, I reminded him), and they now had the roles of kings, of writers, of artists, painting their own canvas, writing their own novels and stories, commanding their own plot of land. People couldn't become good without evil. It was the opposite too, but evil had a place in time. That was why the rats lived in the bottom of Seattle and made a despicable world with their machine gods that, little did they know, actually controlled the misery of the humans, as each gear rotated, yet another life was ruined. A baby being miscarried. Someone being murdered. Someone committing suicide. Theft. Even extreme cases like genocide and bombings and slavery.
The rats controlled everything. Evil was really what made Earth so different from the other planets, the other worlds. Because we, and the humans, are capable of committing heinous acts. Only us. Humans made everything interesting. And so did we, with our prowess to become gods.
I told him it was too much evil that was what drove me away. Satan knew that too. Hell was becoming overpopulated. So I wanted to try again I told him. Except Sonic would be God. Because unlike me, he cared. I never cared about anyone but myself and my stories. I never felt anything for my characters.
Sonic's life was becoming smaller, smaller, his breaths soon as small as his fists, his body seemed to decay like a rose in winter, the sun baking his taut body, and I felt the same way that Cain had felt when he killed his brother. I was behind the murder, truly, but Satan just gave me the blueprints to follow through with it. I wasn't sure who the culprit was anymore. Manson was charged with murder when he brainwashed everyone to do his deeds. And Satan had brainwashed me to create a new world.
I could imagine the sun had fingers, touching my brother, stroking his face, telling him everything was all right…
The lotus flower floated in space, along with Benjamin's crumpled up body. And Blaze's tears that burst into wired flowers, and Wave's fur boots Storm gave to her, and the one flash of lightning that signaled that Storm was still alive somewhere, looking for his sister in the heavens above. He flew very high, and found nothing, but relative peace. Cream's body floated too, like a body down the river, along with the miscarried objects and fragments of memory of the other characters I met. There was also Jet's wine and his bloodied, moist bird lips, but no one really cared, let's be honest.
What is my real name, Itsu, Satan had asked.
He knew it wasn't Chip. It was only a pseudonym. A disguise to trick the other people living miserable lives into becoming his slaves. Shadow truly didn't know, and didn't know why he would give him such valuable information, when he could stop Satan's powers at any time.
Mephiles…
The first God that became king assigned him as the creator of evil, ever since Eve bit the fig that caused women to become pregnant and have periods, and he was a snake that crawled on his ribs. He was only a Gardner snake with no fangs. He had no other weapons besides manipulation.
I promised her an interesting world, he said. I promised her a world where men would suffer, and women would be the creators, but I gave her pain when she gives birth. I gave the dawn pain when it gives birth to the sun, before Itsu stole that from me. Pain makes things interesting, don't you think? It makes us stop doing reckless actions. Cause we're afraid of getting hurt.
Shadow knew that too well.
He said if pain would make him stop doing reckless actions, then he would've never killed Sonic on the crucifix star. His body nearly ruptured at the thought of killing him. Someone he sympathized with. The only one who could hear out his pain that his uncle didn't stop.
I started shaking. My body couldn't take the LSD any longer. My brain couldn't process these strange images that I had witnessed with my gold and silver sun and moon. I lied in bed, I watched as Shadow waited the three days Sonic would be revived like a loyal dog, and I threw up, rats floating in space and being collected in the debris to be sucked up by black holes. The hate that stars gathered in their hearth.
I waited.
Satan turned into a snake, on the mutual agreement between both him and Shadow that he could thrive in the next Earth. Evil had a purpose, he said. Without it, we wouldn't be able to distinguish our heroes and our villains. People would never appreciate good and the acts of heroes. And to (he admitted) make the world much more interesting. It took only one man who burned down orphanages and kicked puppies to make people truly think about where they belonged, and to bind society and to let the humans evolve from apes. Without the creation of religion, we would still be living in trees.
I bowed my head, and prayed for my brother, my God.
—
Easter Sunday came to space.
As the glaring sun came forth with its golden face (my golden eye), Sonic's body had shriveled up like a dehydrated and wrinkled fruit, and I thought I could catch his body slowly rising up, gathering all the breath inside him, then coming out in zephyrean gales that blew the old decayed Milky Way away, and Shadow held onto the crucifix star, having the wind caress his quills, while I could hear and see the laughter and smirk of Mephiles as he devoured all remnants of the old memories of Earth, and I knew Satan would be a part of people's folklores in this new world as well. Whether he would be abhorred or worshiped by ignorant teenagers. I wasn't too sure of which would be more, but he was evil, and he was smart, and he had sincerity and charisma, and I wondered how I fell into his trap in the first place.
I regret placing so much suffering on my brother. And my family. Both of them were killed by Mephiles. Maybe unintentionally, sure, but Myself, I couldn't deal that I basically killed my entire family…
Will they come back in the new world? Will I have mom and dad take me to high-class events again, like opera in the theaters, watching The Great Gatsby with them on a warm Saturday night as people were full of ice cream and summer beer and sex, walking to parties and dancing on the veranda as the women got naked and showed their breasts and were caressed by their demonic and sinful hands that disintegrated her soul as they touched, and Sonic, protecting me, telling me bedtime stories when mom was too busy, when dad was off reporting, rocking me to sleep as he read Great Expectations to the best of his ability, and I fell asleep to the soft lull of his words, as if he was a comforting tidal wave in the shores of Seattle…
Tidal waves don't beg forgiveness
Crashed and on their way
Father, he enjoyed collisions
Others walked away
A snowflake falls in May…
Not yet.
Not yet, my friend. Not yet.
(Click. I could hear it, ready to speak with lead.)
The stakes, how silver, how many years seemed to pass before a new world was made! (Days to God could've been thousands and millions of years, did you know that?)
Four million years it had been, since Shadow waited, since Sonic woke up, stretching his arms over the sun and crevassing his body, his ribs protruding from lack of food and drink, and the trees had grown into a new circulatory system for him. New veins. New arteries. New heart.
He still loved Istu, despite what he did.
I told him about the world he birthed. The world he rose with the needle that Aceso had carried, the needle that Shadow gave to you in your cheek. Look how beautiful your son is!
I wrote this, to briefly described the millions of years it took to shed more life on the planet:
The world was barren, hot, and barely a single green life had grown on it, but when Sonic and Shadow had landed on the brown planet, they discovered hope. And with their hope, they began to cry. With their tears, with their happiness of this new world, the tears soon formed plants. So many trees! So many grasses and flowers and fruits and vegetables! The tears had formed rivers. They decided that the new humans could name the rivers, for both Sonic and Shadow believed the world truly belonged to them, the creatures with free will.
Their tears gave life. Protozoa and amoebas grew from the soil. This is where life started at. This is where life began, I told them. It will take their own version of days to make the life get to where it was before. And Sonic had to take care of them. Hear their prayers. Cultivate their passion and hopes and dreams and desires. Let their happiness grow in your heart. Make Shadow understand, too, that life wasn't full of pain.
Life was truly a miraculous thing. Something made with so much emotion. You can tell, cause the first God was bipolar. He was a gifted genius as he made his world. But me? I couldn't take credit for all of this. The first God was my inspiration. He was more of an inspiration to me than Fitzgerald and Plath and Hemingway, all those guys, and I learned his secrets to creating art.
Sonic and Shadow both held hands, as they experienced the first of the sky giving birth to the sun, as the blood revealed the shining balding head of the new baby boy who would give life to the plants and give the human their light. And they couldn't be happier. They were its brand new fathers.