Part Eight

The child was fading in and out of consciousness at the bottom of the ravine.  

He was holding onto his task by willpower more than strength.  

He crawled along sharp rocks over broken ground with one good leg, eye, and arm.  

The child crawled as powerfully as he could into a horizon he could not see. Darkness lay heavy all around him, and silence ruled the bottom of the ravine. He knew that the monster was still out there--still hunting him--but the howling could not be heard from so far away.  

The child groped blindly over a broken land, sharp rocks tearing into him as he pulled himself weakly forward with one hand. 

 

The sick man pulled the cupboard open with his one good arm. The medicine bottle he needed shone out like a beacon. In a desperate haste, he swung up and knocked it from its shelf.  

The bottle fell forward and clattered beside him. 

 

The religious man was clipped on the shoulder by a piece of the ceiling that tore away. He fell to the ground as the sagging wall lost the ability to hold its weight, and the ceiling came crashing down in a hailstorm.  

The religious man reached out for one of the flowers of his god to hold onto, but something sharp slashed against his hand, and he pulled back a bleeding palm and screamed.  

Dust fell all around the religious man, leaving him blind. He heard a great rending tear to his right, and he felt the weight of something heavy crash against his hip, knocking him forward.  

In pain, the religious man lashed out once more. He knew that God was up there, that He was there for him, to protect him.  

Something else clipped his palm, and his bleeding hand was severed at the wrist.  

The religious man screamed. 

 

The child saw some semblance of light in the distance.  

As he did, a great force slammed into his shoulder, driving it and his face into the rugged ravine floor.  

The child’s one good arm went limp for a moment. Blood spilled from his nose and new gashes in his cheeks.  

The light beckoned him, but the child felt the motivation to continue begin to slip away. His leg felt like it was being crushed in a grinder. The muscles of his one good arm whined in protest. His broken arm was a source of unending anguish as he had not the strength to raise it and was forced to rake it across the broken rocky ground. His head was a bottomless pit of agony. His soul was nearly broken.  

The child gave into this dangerous spiral for only a moment. He gritted his teeth and thought stubbornly of the task at hand. So long as he had strength left, he could not give up.  

He raised his one good eye to the light, and he shot his good hand forward, finding purchase in a small cleft in front of him. He pulled himself forward.  

As soon as he made this first effort, something slashed the hand of his broken arm.  

The child bit back the scream and threw his good hand forward again.  

At the second effort, an invisible force crashed into his hip.  

The child yelped and gritted his teeth, falling forward.  

The child took several deep breaths, and he made the effort again.  

He managed two more strides forward before he felt a sharp tear along the wrist of his broken arm, and the hand was severed at the wrist.  

The child now noticed the tears that fell unwillingly from his eyes, obscuring the vision in his one good eye. He bit back the screams, swallowing the pain as well as he could.  

He threw his good hand forward, and kept pulling himself toward the light. 

 

The religious man tried to see through the torrent of dust and debris, cradling his mutilated arm.  

Dust invaded his eyes, and it became painful beyond belief to open them at all. He tried to discern where he was in the sanctuary, where God was, but he was lost in a sea of swirling hail.  

Something crashed into the religious man’s legs, and he fell forward. When he tried to pull himself up to keep going, he found himself pinned under its weight.  

The religious man didn’t have the strength to free himself. He barely had the strength to move at all.  

The religious man closed his eyes and cradled his head, and prayed to God for protection. 

 

The sick man grabbed at the bottle and shook it.  

It rattled fiercely.  

If the sick man had strength left to cry, he would have cried out.  

As it was, all he could manage was a ragged moan.  

The sick man pressed down on the lid with his one good hand, twisted it, and spilled the pills all over the floor.  

And he stopped.  

The sick man looked at the white blobs strewn out over the floor, and he found himself incapable of reaching forward to grab one.  

The sick man pondered this hesitation and blinked.  

When he opened his eyes again, he found them both to be blind. 

 

The child made it to the light.  

The sheer sides of the ravine fell away, and he was lost in some sort of transitory world of pale gold and soft ground.  

He kept crawling, blood still spilling from the gashes on his face, the broken nose, the severed wrist, the severed hip.  

The child no longer felt any part of his body; he had collapsed in on himself like a star, transforming into a black hole of agony.  

Yet the child still shot his good hand forward, still pulled himself along the path.  

He had no sense of time or distance in the pale golden world, and he had no idea when it had faded away and become a plain of wild grass.  

The child shot his arm forward, pulled himself further.  

Another invisible force beset him, slamming into the backs of his knee, pinning him in place. The child spat out an agonized gasp, winced, and bit down hard. The force seemed to press in further and further until it threatened to sever half of his remaining leg. The child gritted his teeth, shot his arm forward, pulled. He made little progress against the force, but it seemed to lessen some; he made the effort again, again, again, again, again, again, again--

The force against his leg was gone, and he rocketed forward over the grassland.  

The child wanted to take a moment to rest, but he could not risk the delay. He took a deep breath, and shot his arm forward again.  

The child pulled himself along the grassland until he tumbled down a hill and came to the foot of a well.  

The child looked around wildly to find himself in the middle of a ghost town.  

He thrust his hand forward, found purchase in the gravel road. He pulled himself forward.  

He wanted to shout, to cry out for help, but his mouth was dry, and only a hoarse whisper came out.  

There was no answer save for the wind--and a howl in the distance.  

The child wondered what had happened there, but he did not dwell on it.  

He pressed on.  

As he crossed over the border of the town, aiming for the distant forest beyond framed by a mountain range on either side, he blinked, and reopened his eyes to find them both now blind. 

 

The sick man found the world to be in a haze.  

He could no longer see, and there was a distant ringing in his ears.  

The sick man heard the snake whisper to him, but the words were lost in the static.  

The sick man began to weep again--or thought he did--but he knew not what for.  

After all, he knew he wasn’t going to die.  

He was still expecting a Visitor. 

 

The murderer lunged at the boy in the black suit.  

The boy in the black suit made no move to defend himself; he stood there impassively, allowing the rain to tear into him, allowing the murderer to take him down.  

The murderer had no resistance in the contest of strength and sat atop the boy in the black suit. He brought his hands to his neck and squeezed.  

The boy in the black suit stared up at the murderer, his eyes soft and hollow.  

The murderer clenched his teeth, then roared. He gripped tighter around his prey’s neck, squeezing as hard and strong as he possibly could, putting in more effort to snuff the life out of this man who had led to the ruin of everything, the sole cause of the Cataclysm, the singular agent of evil in his world.  

The boy in the black suit made barely any sign of registering the assault. He did little more than stare up with hollow eyes.  

The murderer kept trying, kept squeezing, but he couldn’t kill the boy in the black suit.  

“Do you feel better yet?” the boy in the black suit asked. “Because I don’t feel a thing.”  

The murderer choked him even harder, but there was still no response. Reeling in disbelief, his mind cycling through every line of reasoning it could attempt to grasp as he flailed in defeat, the murderer’s grip fell away, and he fell back from the boy in the black suit in a fit of angry tears indistinguishable from the rain.  

The boy in the black suit slowly rose to his feet.  

“Why did you come back?” the murderer growled.  

“I’m going back to the Ruins,” the boy in the black suit answered.  

“I won’t let you. You’ll deface that holy site even more than you already have.”  

“You clearly can’t stop me.”  

“Why would you go back there?”  

“It’s where I belong.”  

The murderer pushed himself off the ground just as the storm began to dissipate. The rain died down, the thunder decrescendoed, and a grey light returned to the sky as the clouds rolled apart.  

The boy in the black suit began to walk past the gate, down the other side of the mountain.  

The murderer felt he could barely stand as the quarry of his life’s hunt passed him by.  

Lip trembling, legs shaking, the murderer could barely stand or speak; but he fought for purchase in both areas and cried out in desperation, “Can you save us?” and then fell to his hands and knees.  

The boy in the black suit stopped in his tracks but didn’t turn around. “Yes,” he answered.  

“Will you?”  

The boy in the black suit thought of the girl in the black dress. He thought of her twitching and nearly unresponsive on the ground, branded by the fire and the lightning.  

He thought of other people, other attire. In those visions, all the bodies were lifeless.  

“No,” he answered.  

The murderer roared at this answer, and tried to lunge once more for the boy in the black suit, but he was too slow and weak, and his legs wavered under him. He tripped over one of the cracks in the ground and slammed into a small puddle.  

He tried to get back up, but he couldn’t.  

He could only watch as the boy in the black suit walked away. 

 

The religious man came through the storm alive, if only for the moment. 

A sharp piece of debris had torn through his abdomen in the chaos, and his oblique was still spewing crimson. Something else had lodged itself into his neck, and he couldn’t summon the strength or knowledge of staunch the bleeding.  

His legs were undoubtedly broken, still pinned beneath the piece of the house that had brought him down.   

He blinked his eyes carefully to find that all the dust had settled, the sanctuary nothing more than heaps of rubble in the middle of a large field. The rest of the house, he could see, was also fallen. Perhaps the sanctuary had been the last thing to go.  

The religious man brought his eyes forward, to praise God one last time.  

The altar still stood, but it was empty.  

The religious man panicked. He looked around wildly, trying to see any sight of his god or what had happened to Him; but there was nothing.  

As if He had never been there at all, his god was gone.  

The religious man tried to crawl toward the altar but was held back by the debris, and the injuries. He reached forward desperately, grasping only at chalky flakes of the fallen sanctuary. As his vision faded, he closed his eyes and offered one last prayer.  

That time, there was no answer. 

 

The child crawled on as the howling in the distance grew closer.  

He groped blindly along a forest floor, but he had no need for his sight. He was guided by a deeper sense of intuition--by an internal sense of guidance passed down to him through dreams, through visions, through experience. He knew where to go.  

The invisible force beset him heavily. He felt something tear into his stomach. Something lodged itself into his neck. At each of these, the child winced and screamed--or thought he did--but his tolerance for the agony grew with every effort, and they faded into the ceaseless, churning grinding of his body and soul within moments; and he pressed on.  

The howling grew nearer in the distance.  

The child pressed on. 

 

The sick man could hear nothing over the static ringing in his ears.  

He could see nothing at all.  

His sense of touch began to fade.  

While he still could, he reached out and grabbed one of the pills. It was white-hot between his fingers. He cringed at the pain but began to bring the medicine to his lips.  

But he stopped before he reached them, and he dropped the pill.  

The sick man tossed over to his back.  

He decided to wait for the Visitor right there.  

He imagined that he could still see the golden smear shine through his window.  

The snake whispered to the sick man again.  

This time, he heard it. 

And he agreed.  

The sick man began to feel peaceful.  

He could no longer feel the ragged breaths or flakes of skin breaking off.  

He could no longer feel the blood running down his skin or the pain in his lungs at each hacking cough.  

He no longer knew when he spat up all over himself.  

The world was turning into a blank void.  

The sick man tried to cup the nose of the snake with his hand, but he couldn’t be sure if he managed to or not.  

The sick man began to lose feeling, and he could swear there was a knock at the door.  

The sick man perked up, and began t--

 

The child’s sense of touch began to fade.  

He became less and less sure of what he was grabbing onto or if he was even grabbing anything at all.  

He made it through the soft soil of under cool grass to a broken, arid, rocky ground before the sense fell away entirely.  

He no longer felt the pain of his wounds scraping against the ground, but he no longer knew if he was moving at all. With nothing but hearing left, the only indication he had was the distant howling that grew ever closer, making it seem like he was moving back if anything.  

Still, the child pressed on. 

 

The naked prince shed the clothes that he had gathered for his appearance.  

He stumbled back through the halls once more, ducking out of sight of the windows and avoiding the light.  

He could hear his people calling out to him.  

He tried to shut out the noise.  

Sometimes, he whistled. Sometimes, he ran. Sometimes, he screamed. Sometimes, he cried. 

 

The haggard old man wept at the grave of the dog.  

He allowed to roar of the waterfall to drown out the noise as he threw himself upon the spot where he had buried his best friend.  

The haggard old man let loose, released.  

He wept and wept and wept.  

He knew not how long he stayed.  

The waterfall drowned out all. 

 

The murderer clawed himself slowly to his feet.  

The boy in the black suit was already far beyond his sight, but there was hope he could find him again.  

The murderer walked shakily after him--toward the path down the mountain.  

His head began to spin, but he attributed it to exhaustion and kept going.  

But then his heart seized suddenly, his vision blurred. His lungs gave away, and he felt himself hit the ground before he realized he was falling.  

His whole body was wracked with tremors that jerked him around strongly enough to open gashes in his skin as he thrashed against the rocks.  

The murderer was lost in the blender of the world again, blinking rapidly to try to readjust his sight until he felt sick and closed them and prayed for the end.  

By the time the end came, he had no idea how he had held on. He gasped for breath as his eyes began to slowly focus and his heart began to beat normally again.  

He lay there, bathing in the blood of new wounds as the world returned to some sense of normalcy.  

There was something broken deep down inside him--that much he knew.  

He had no idea how much longer he could hold out, but he knew it wasn’t forever. 

 

The boy in the black suit walked slowly down the mountain. He remembered what it had been like the first time he had come there--the elaborate masonry of the now-eroded path, the people and buildings that stood where there were now only vague remnants of skeletons and ruins.  

The valley below was in a similar state. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing to behold within it; it was little more than a far field of ash that swirled in a smoky wind.  

The boy in the black suit remembered the assault. He remembered the desolation he had brought to those lands.  

He pressed forth and beyond the valley, through what was once a forest and into the bounds of what was once his empire.  

Nothing remained but heaps of debris upon the ground and stained skeletons breaking apart in the open.  

Miles and miles, stretching into infinity.  

Nothing was left but rubble and ruin.  

The boy in the black suit made his way to where he knew their castle once stood.  

All around it, the land was dead, covered in ash.  

The boy in the black suit came to the center of it. He rummaged through the debris until he found scraps of what was once a blanket and something that resembled a basket. He laid the blanket on the ground and set the basket in the center.  

The boy in the black suit lay down on the blanket, closing his eyes as he let the ashes bury him. 

 

The naked prince found no rest upon any of the stones of the palace, nor in his bed.  

He walked endlessly, as an insomniac, through the halls.  

Aimless wandering led him back to the throne room.  

Spears of sunlight bathed the two symbols of power.  

The naked prince felt sick again, but he swallowed down the feeling.  

He approached the thrones, and set himself up on one.  

The naked prince looked down upon the room from where he sat. He glanced up at the stained-glass window, trying to see through the golden light.  

The cries of his people filtered in through the walls, lashing him, bathing him.  

The naked prince allowed the cries to wash over him.  

He didn’t try to shut out the noise. 

 

The haggard old man hardly remembered the days.  

Everything flittered by and left, and time wore on.  

The haggard old man plunged back into his habits.  

The house grew dirty, in ill repair.  

His room was a mess that he hated yet couldn’t clean.  

He spent his days lying in bed and weeping at the grave.  

The haggard old man could hardly focus, could hardly feel.  

Time marched on, and there he remained--

in sorrow, 

in desolation,  

in ruin.  

Time marched on.  

There he remained. 

 

The boy in the black suit seemed to find himself immortal.  

He awoke in the field of ruins covered in ash and completely alive.  

His head roiling, mind protesting his survival, he arose from his tomb.  

The boy in the black suit rose from the ashen grave and walked to the shore on the border of what was once an empire.  

He watched the waves lap against the shore and waited for ships that were buried at sea to come home.  

He stayed there and waited, waited indefinitely. 

 

The naked prince sat resolute upon his throne.  

The ghost materialized in the one next to him.  

“I tried to help you,” she said.  

The naked prince turned to her. “I still love you,” he told her, reaching out to grab her hand.  

As soon as his fingertips touched hers, her hand began to break away, falling apart like threads coming undone and blowing away like autumn leaves.  

This destruction crawled up the ghost’s arm, spreading fine lines across her body that prepared to tear her apart.  

“Exactly,” she answered.  

The naked prince combed his mind for something more to say, but the ghost broke apart and was gone.  

The naked prince stayed on his throne, alone.  

His people cried out for him.  

He listened, but refused to answer. 

 

The murderer slowly recovered from the latest attack.  

He languidly rose to his feet and waited for the residual nausea to pass.  

He looked back down the path that the boy in the black suit had gone by.  

The murderer didn’t know how long ago that was or where the boy in the black suit would be right now, and he did not wish to be confronted by the skeletons on the ground and the charred marks on the ruins. He did not wish to feel their blame.  

The murderer turned the other way, walked toward the gate.  

In the distance, he saw a storm forming in the sky, slowly.  

He bounced from one foot to another and tried to shake the doubts from his head.  

He readied himself to take his next victim. 

 

The haggard old man groggily came to his feet and looked at his reflection in the mirror. A lost and forsaken face with heavy black circles beneath the eyes and skin that seemed to be wearing away stared back.  

He stumbled to the window of the room and peered through from the side of the dark curtain. The sunlight was blinding.  

He turned away from the window. His room was a mess of dirty dishes, clothes strewn across the floor, and open books that had never been read. The blanket on his bed was tossed to the side, inches away from grazing against the crumpled rug that sheltered empty bags and wrappers. An army of dust and tiny debris lay stubbornly over everything it could, and came back swiftly when expelled.  

The haggard old man looked beyond this desolation and beheld the door. He worked the feeling back into his muscles and weighed the options in his head.  

He knew he should leave. He knew he should leave. He knew he should--

He was interrupted from his thoughts by a low hiss, and a smoke began to filter through the cracks in the door.  

The haggard old man froze for the moment, unsure of what to do. He wanted to run, wanted to escape, but he was paralyzed, victim to his own imagination, to his own will.  

The smoke seemed to swirl endlessly as it coalesced into a thick cloud and began to fill out, to shape, to grow.  

The haggard old man backed away, pressed himself desperately against the wall behind him as the smoke came together in the form of a tan kitten with brown ears.  

The kitten looked up at the haggard old man and meowed happily.  

“No,” the haggard old man murmured. “Please, God, no.”  

The kitten took a step toward the haggard old man.  

“Go away,” the haggard old man pleaded. “Please, please go away.”  

The kitten took a few more steps forward and meowed happily.  

“Please,” the haggard old man whimpered. “Please.”  

The kitten took a running start, and leapt toward the haggard old man.  

The haggard old man instinctively caught the kitten before he could think better of it and found it to be solid and whole despite being comprised entirely of smoke--warm to the touch with a coat that looked like fur but felt like nothing at all. The kitten looked up at him with kind, dark brown eyes and meowed happily.  

The haggard old man felt a tingle against the skin where his hands held the kitten, and, before he could discern what it may mean, a thousand waves of warmth speared through his nerves, racing up and down and all throughout him. The haggard old man found himself paralyzed, trapped in the swirling vortex of smoke that formed the kitten’s eyes as this warmth invaded and conquered his nerves, his mind, his heart.  

The haggard old man could tangibly feel the terror in his heart begin to shrink and slink away into some dark corner to be buried. His eyes softened as he looked into the kitten’s, and the kitten meowed happily once more. The haggard old man felt his defenses falling, felt his frown fading.  

The last outposts of reason in his mind rallied to make one last horrible din, screaming to him, making him remember. He thought of the smoke. He thought of all the years it had tormented him. He thought of all the other kittens and all the other forms beside. He thought of times when he once had friends to talk to regularly, a life still to lead--a life that the smoke was suffocating out of him.  

But the haggard old man looked into the kitten's dark brown eyes and felt the warmth that enveloped him. He knew that this was no trick. He knew that this was no illusion. He felt the comfort seep deep into his bones, felt the cares and worries of life begin to melt away in his mind.  

For the first time that day, he smiled.  

The din in his mind slowly began to fall away like a crashing wave that now retreated into the sea.  

Soon, it was gone.  

The haggard old man smiled at the kitten. The kitten meowed happily.  

All of a sudden, he knew this time was different.  

He knew that the kitten would never hurt him. 

 

The child was in a world of darkness where there was nothing but the distant howling approaching. In every corner of his mind, he began to see nothing but the monster.  

The child began to panic, to wonder if he could make it.  

The howling grew ever closer, slowly growing into a cacophonous roar.  

As one of those roars died down, the child heard a voice. “Back again?”  

The child stopped moving. He cocked his head toward the voice, saw nothing, but narrowed his eyes anyway. “I don’t know you,” he said. “I’ve never been here before.”  

The librarian laughed. 

 

The boy in the black suit could feel the time slipping away.  

He knew that there was so little of it left in the grand scheme of things.  

Yet there was so much more that he needed to atone for.  

The fiery tongues of the whips would never be assuaged.  

He endeavored to endure their blows, forever.  

He remained immortal, entombed, and fragile.  

The boy in the black suit wandered the wilderness in search of a place to call home.  

It took so, so long before he found anywhere; but he finally reserved a house in a small city that he could call his own: a place far enough away from the others that he could justify his absence, stay away from everyone else--the potential victims.  

The boy in the black suit made this place his own, and it slowly fell into decay.  

Time seemed to pass on endlessly, and the boy in the black suit endured every moment.  

He spent his hours alone in the fields of memory, caught in the sight of the fire and lightning.  

The little time he had, he spent awash in tears.  

The boy in the black suit let the time pass on as he grew naught.  

Every day stretched into infinity, and he knew not when it would stop.  

The boy in the black suit felt the time seep into his body, his bones.  

The aching set in, 

the regret,  

the sorrow.  

He spent his days under the curse of those tongues of fire.  

He dared not lift a finger.  

And, one day, as he got ready in the morning, he stood in the bathroom and could hardly recognize his face.  

The boy in the black suit stared into the mirror; 

the haggard old man stared back.