A Fever Dream

     I bit off my ex-boss' nose and part of her face last night, her flesh like gelatin in my mouth, just as tasteless as her soul ultimately proved itself to be. I had approached her with murder in my eyes, and though she held off her panic at first, certain that I wouldn't do anything in full sight of the other people present, she swiftly was disabused of that notion. I didn't care about their presence, they didn't matter to me, only she did. Her eyes widened and she raised her hands to hold me off as she began to realize that, whatever I intended, it was going to happen, regardless of the consequences. I grabbed her shoulders, her long-sleeved shirt like silk beneath my fingers, cool and smooth, no hint of the warmth a body should have. I gripped her and, as she began struggling ineffectually, I pulled her close to me, my head moving forward, as if I was leaning in for a kiss. Oh my, the impropriety of the situation, and here in front of customers no less. And then I sank my teeth in her flesh, piercing skin and the sense of an untouchable self. Violation.
     I took a mouthful and, letting her go, I turned from her and spat out the piece of Wormwood, with a disgust wholly appropriate to the situation. It wasn't the taste mind you, it was more that I wanted to show my absolute disgust at her, at her identity, at this person, this vile thing.
     I looked at the wooden rafters above as a small uproar began behind me. It sank in that this was an opening salvo and that the echoes of it would resound for a long time. Then, aware that I shouldn't really have done this, aware that the consequences of this would be severe, life-changing even, and from a growing sense of disgust with my self, feeling soiled and stained, I turned reality into something that did not have my last action in it.
     I walked away, out the door, deliberately giving no attention to the scene behind me, knowing that reality had bent itself to my will, but at the same time not entirely sure of it, and aware that in either case I'd be best served getting away from here as fast as possible.

     Kevin was waiting for me in the car, and as he asked me where to, I responded that he should just get us away from here. Now, who is kevin, I hear you ask. But the truth is that I don't really know. His name wasn't even Kevin. I can't remember his actual name, but there is a glimpse of it, a feeling as if Kevin would be a good approximation of his name.
     In the grey light, but clear and perfect grey light as if it's very sunny out, we move out onto the highway. I sigh as I feel the mental drag of the situation start to sink in. The stress is telling. It's settled into my limbs, and my head has started to hurt. I'm on the passenger-side, with the man who's not Kevin, smooth-faced and clean, easily turning the car onto the turn-off to the highway. His hair is pepper and salt. Hair that's neat and shiny, but a shiny as from an over-exposure to sun not from being unwashed or from product. He has dark brown eyes aimed at the road ahead and radiates a sense that the world might just be grey for him.

     The pain in my head is starting to dominate the trend of my thoughts. The whole situation is pretty much a headache. Not just the building feeling in my head, I mean, but also the events that have just happened, and the feeling of discomfort they've given me. And you can bet your ass that somehow, there's a record of this somewhere, and one day it'll be used against me. Maybe it's just my conscience railing at the violence, a piece of my soul having just died, a bit of innocence lost, or something, but either way, the spleen of it, the psychic pain of it, is pretty awful. It turns the world into quite a narrow place, a tunnel-vision brought about by emotional discomfort. The future has become a thing fraught with horror and anxiety.

     Maybe I just need to eat something. On the dashboard there's something wrapped in aluminum foil. Something the man who isn't Kevin bought from somewhere that isn't anywhere I know. Take it out, he says to me, give me a piece. He must have seen me looking. I pull off the foil from what turns out to be a brown chocolate cake on a silver platter. It probably isn't really silver, and rather it's just some hardened aluminum-type metal, probably. I don't know, I'm not a metallurgist or even the remotest bit knowledgeable on any of the things normal people are. It might be the newest thing in tupper-ware and I wouldn't know. I break off a piece and hand it to him and he scoffs it down like he's starving. I ask what it is, and he say that I should help myself. I do and gulp it down. It doesn't taste like chocolate but if you asked me what it tastes like I wouldn't be able to tell you. I ask him what it is, and responds that it's just something he's bought recently. That's okay, I think to myself, I don't really care, there can be a few more mysterious things in the world that I know bugger-all about.
     We've been driving for a while, the foliage flashing past, the green the only indication of an actual living world beyond this highway, if you don't count the other cars. But then, I realize, there might not actually be anything past the tree-line, the shrubbery and the tall trees both conspiring to hide the vistas of cold grey nothingness that lies beyond, waiting to swallow me whole.

     My eyes feel dry, my head feels warm and I can feel a frown starting to take shape as I look at the other vehicles.vWhere once the cars, the trucks, the buses and all the other assorted types of vehicles that I know bugger-all about moved sedately in straight lines forward, only ever deviating from their course to switch to a faster lane, or to take a turnoff to parts unknown, now they are moving in noticeably erratic motions. I don't mean that they're speeding up or slowing down, or switching lanes in a way that could be construed to be the work of dull, or psychotically suicidal minds, itching for some high-speed entertainment. I mean the cars, the trucks, the buses and all the other assorted types of vehicles that I know bugger-all about have started to move in ways that should not be possible.

     There's a white gas-truck with a horizontal red stripe spinning like a damn Beyblade in front of us, its wheels inches above the road, judderingly turning in a mad high speed. If the laws of physics where still operating as they should the centrifugal force it attains by spinning that fast should have ripped the truck apart, never mind what speed, gravity and the asphalt of the road would have done to the wheels and the lower carriage. Maybe juddering is the wrong word for it. Stuttering would be better. The truck isn't even losing speed, or deviating from its course in any way. It's for all the world going about its business as if it just hasn't royally upended just about half the laws of reality by behaving in such an abnormal way. It's almost insulting, as if it doesn't care that it's just transgressed in a profoundly upsetting way. I pause. Or maybe it's just unaware. Maybe it's me that somehow just has started seeing more than I'm supposed to.
     Because the other cars are likewise misbehaving. I turn to look over to other lanes, and the cars that are headed in the other direction are also acting out of sorts. Not one of them is moving in the same way as any of the others, but nevertheless, there's a strange, delirious harmony here somewhere, I feel.
I look back ahead, fixing my gaze on the twisting vehicles ahead of us. There's something strange going on, I remark to the man that isn't Kevin. My gaze drops to the dashboard, where I didn't cover the cake.  Maybe an inch from the outer crust the cake is chocolate, probably even actual chocolate cake, but in the center the cake is revealed to be green, and very moist-looking.
What is that, I ask aloud. Kevin responds softly saying it's something he bought.

     It's not weed. Shit, whatever this is it's heavy duty, I think to myself. That motherfucker.
Still, it could be worse. At least the pain in my head is being pushed back by the visions swarming past the side of the highway. One doesn't complain when a gift horse is looked in the mouth, or something. I grit my teeth and clutch my head as a spike of agony slides deeper in my brain. Hunched over, I wait for the moment to pass, watching the saliva unspool from my mouth, clear ropes threading their gravity-loving way onto the floor of the car. After a while it passes and I sit up again.

     I look outside and I notice the trees and shrubbery have given way to an actual world beyond.
I grimace as I realize that the madness hasn't stopped. The world beyond the highway is inconstant, changing every moment, every second becoming profoundly altered. Farmlands, a house here and there with countless rows of planted stuff, are momentarily populated by windmills, old-style, dutch or holland-esque, not the technologically advanced kind, and then as fast as they came, the windmills are gone. Or rather, they've become something else. Buildings multiplying, morphing together, changing in material and style, as fast as thought. It goes too quickly for me to try and see it, and I'm already nauseous as it is. I wish I had some water, I comes to me that I might be dehydrated. I bend over and hold my head between my knees. For long moments I breathe in and out.

     As I look out again the world has become glass and steel. We are enclosed by skyscrapers, blue glazing reflecting the blue sky above, dotted with clouds as woolly as only dreams could be.
The landscape now doesn't alter anymore. It's become constant even though we're still moving past millions of different windows, all blue glazed, all beautiful as only my favourite colour could be. It comes to me that this all is one big mighty building, endless and infinite. I look at the windows, and realize that there must be people beyond them, untold thousands of them passing every second. How many of them notice our car, I wonder. I tell the man who is not called Kevin that I realize what is going on, that the landscape is informed by the dreaming of the people who populate this country, that the most dominant dreamers' dreams inform the dreams of the others. That it probably all started with one guy that dreamt about a blue-glazed sky-scraper, and whose dream infected others' dreams, like an infection spreading outward, like a ripple in a pond, until the only possibility that remained was a world of steel and dark blue glass. But I'm thirsty, and with the nausea and the headache it follows that I must be dehydrated.

     Ahead of us the concrete road begins to slope downward , it's become unmoored from the place around it, hanging in midair, surrounded by miles and miles of skyscrapers. The catch rails have turned white as if we're on a bridge. I look ahead and I see water. Ahead and below lies the dead-end of a canal surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers, blue glass and cold steel. The road ends abruptly and we barrel off of it. For some reason I'm no longer in the car, and the man who isn't Kevin has disappeared. I fall towards what is probably a very cold and very hard expanse of water. But really, I've only myself to blame, as I really was almost wishing for something to drink. I'm sure I was in it too, the water I mean, my head breaching the surface, exulting in the taste of fresh air. Then I wake up, and the nausea and the headache make me realize I'm probably very sick.

Too Much

There are so many people these days that every single one of them can find something to read that will cater specifically to them, as weird and outlandish and as fucked-up as that might be. This cannot continue. It is a wild, wild world, it cannot be contained.
I don't know why I think that this cannot continue. I just know that it is too much. It is too chaotic, incomprehensibly so. Surely some revelation is at hand. As the poet said; the centre cannot hold. But this is not a second coming, no. This second birth will be your first death. On the heels of revelation, your destruction will follow.
At a certain point you become aware of your ignorance, of how little you know, and more and more something opens up. Something stands ready there to usher you in. Into a great dark, or a great light.
And the more you learn, you find that there is more you did not, more you did not see, and that this will inevitably increase, to exponential levels. And that abyss gapes larger. The ideas are innumerable, veritable constellations of concept, identities and individuals without count. Because we all change and nothing, nothing at all, can be constant. It all adds up, and it does not stop. But the blank pages of the ledger cannot be finite, even if we cannot yet see the final page. And yet we all scribble, unstoppable and, paradoxically, unthinking. There is so much.
Is this not horror, is this not terrifying: In such a sea of endless change, the numberless horde's ever-increasing movement, you realize that you are less than a fraction of the whole, that you are nothing. And that you can only become more and more of nothing. And that this can ever only increase as they become more and more. As impossible as it is, you become less, nothing in the face of the total, your everything subsumed into the anything. And it is anything, any thing you can think of, and it all adds to the whole, and you have become All.
The opposite of nothing must be the sum total of humanity.
There must come a time, where it must all be used up, where all of humanity's thoughts, their dreams, feelings and works, must stretch the very fabric of reality itself, where it comes close to spilling from the realm of the mind into that of the material world, but instead, one will flow into the other, and annihilation will follow. Because there is simply too much of it. We will drown, or we will burn.
Somewhere, something is going insane.

Embrace the Madness

'This all comes from a place of deep feeling.'

But a whole bunch of negativity has steadily been taking over. It's become hard to rationalize it all still. I've been slipping more and more. The moments have become glued together, and that one bad moment has become all of them.

So then, as this is my nature, my method, I make it slip further, right into that zone I know so well. No rules here, in the place where one self-destructs. So if you want, you can actually talk about it.
I've somehow been able to hold off for such a long time, delaying the end, not taking into account the sporadic eruptions of purest black, and I've kept it steady, but now I'm derailing the train, and letting it do as much damage as possible. For all the time held off, it's happening so fast now and it's so out of control. I look at what I'm doing and I'm baffled. There are no true reasons for what is happening here. No logic, no real truth forming the basis for the coming wreck. There are only half-lies, half-truths that have somehow become utterly real in sentiment, in innermost feeling, but without logic to back them up. I take a step back, wipe the window clean of the fog of my exhalations and it's gone. It doesn't make sense. I look at it again and again and in the end, past the point of the possibility of comprehension, I have to laugh. And I keep laughing. I'm so tired, but I'm smiling and it's been so long since I've been this happy. I might be insane right now.

Is it cyclical, this thing, this rough beast, its hour come round at last to try and take me down again? Am I in love with it, this state, this feeling of desperation, the teetering, the single step from the edge? I look at it and I can only classify it as madness, because nothing of it is real, it only exists in my head. It's insanity. I've become unstuck from anything solid and any anchoring I had is gone. My world has become this single, incandescent thing, this mind-born madness.
And yes, I do love it, because it's taken over and nothing else matters anymore. It has become the world. The search for meaning, purpose and truth? The reality is what you choose it is. And if something has managed to grab hold of you with such force, such intensity, why would you keep fighting it? You should give it all you have. Let it dictate, let it reign. As it is, this is mine. I am unique.

So I'm going to ride this thing down, let it take me where it will, act on whatever it offers. Let it take the wheel. Maybe if a moment presents itself, I'll just give it a twist, give it a nudge. Who knows what might happen. It doesn't matter, because there is no plan, there is no goal, no place where I'd like to end up. One last weekend of crazy, maybe.

-----

...For the moment at least.

Next week somewhere I'm going to start taking prescription meds, with the intention of getting rid of some stuff I've gotten stuck on. Until then, until I've begun taking them, and figured out the correct dosage, I'm still in a very, very dangerous place.

Right now though, I think I can finally go to bed.

Creative writing, dear reader, sometime you just gotta go with it.

It really, really, really fucking helps.

Blurb attempt for Van Horstmann

Altdorf, a little over a 100 years after the founding of the colleges of magic, and a young man arrives in this the most glorious of the Empire's cities.
Unlike the other visitors shuffling through the gate, he does not gaze in dumb-struck wonder at the capital's plethora of sights and sounds. His gaze is bent in but one direction, and his slow but determined steps lead him, with purpose, towards one of the streets of the Buchbinder's district.
It's here where there's supposed to be one of those Wizard colleges, you know?
Something something, Light? Or, was it white? It's hard to tell, as it's hidden from us normal folk. It is rumoured to look like a blinding pyramid of white. Hah, I grant that it's hard to credit that a place like that might exist here, cradled in the oppressive skein of these tangled streets.
They twist and turn, leading the unwary easily astray, turning them round and round, into dead-ends, teeming thoroughfares, an open sewer or two, and even occasionally leading them out right where they came in, without so much as a hair out of place.
 It's an oddity; Even at the best of times there seems to be something off with the geography of the place, turning new visitors easily astray, leaving them at the mercy of the district's residents. And you're in luck, young man, as I am that, though without a perfidious scheme to work towards, or at least; not today. Hehehe, you can stick close to me, my boy, and I'll show you a thing or two. 
Focus now on the young man, for he, like us, knows where he is going.
Into the narrowest of streets he goes, a fearless diver into dark and dizzying depths, and before long he arrives at a small square enclosed by high buildings. We watch as he, for now, the focus of our tale, solemnly makes his way towards the square's centre and stands there a while, staring into the well at his feet. The sellers at their stalls give him no glance, they have a living to earn. They have no time for flights of fancy.
So the man stands, unobserves, except by us, and then, ever so slowly, like a most noble plank, he lets himself fall forward, and vanishes. Hehehe, dumb-struck wonder indeed.
Just one of those mysteries of the Buchbinder's district, stranger. Come, onward. There's many more sights to see.

-----

Fuck it, I struggled mightily on writing up much of anything on Van Horstmann. and the above was what made it finally happen, the part that kickstarted me. So even if it's not representative, I'm keeping it.

Realmslayer.

Gotrek Gurnisson was the greatest monster slayer of the age, who met his doom at the End Times. The heroic Duardin stepped forth into the Realm of Chaos to fight the daemons gnawing at the world's ending and satisfy his death oath, leaving behind his companion Felix Jaeger. Now Gotrek has returned, having outlived the old gods and the Old World. Spat from the ruinous depths with his redemption unfulfilled, he emerges into the Mortal Realms, a strange new world where gods walk the earth and dark forces are ascendant. Nothing is as he remembers. His oaths are dust, and the lands are torn asunder by Chaos. Yet when Gotrek learns of human champions being elevated to immortality for Sigmar’s fight against this darkness, the so-called 'Stormcast Eternals', he knows why fate has brought him into this new age. To find Felix. For only then can he find the peace in death he seeks. But is there more to Gotrek's apotheosis than even he can fathom? Has he truly been chosen by Grimnir and for what purpose?

-----

Jesus fucking Christ. Oh hell yes!

I can see it now:

Past the end of the world the battle lasted, into eternity, until a new age, and with a new age, a new beginning and a new battle.

The din had ended.

It had come to pass, as impossible as that was. He slowly sat up and looked up at the cataclysm dwindling out into nothingness before them. The violent display of blinding lightning and Godfire had almost gone. With a grunt he levered himself up off the ground and slowly, painfully, hobbled over to the silent figure, sitting morosely at the edge of a newborn abyss.

The Duardin didn't pay him any attention, apart from a swift, inscrutable glance, only conveying acknowledgment, nothing else. The Eternal looked at him and was silent.

The Duardin gave him another glance and then looked back to the dazzling panorama in front of him. The death of a realm unfolded before them, not a sight to be seen every day.
And still the Stormcast Eternal did not look away from the stoic face.

 He didn't say anything. After all, it had been an age, what could mere words possibly convey?

He was silent, and then, in an awed voice; "A slayer still, even after all this time."

The Duardin, in an aeon past named Gotrek, son of Gurni, froze and looked silently at the Stormcast Eternal, hunching deathly still beside him.

He frowned, hesitated and then ventured,

"Manling?"

The blond Stormcast Eternal with the short-cropped hair was silent as in the distance lightning crackled. Then, slowly, he smiled.

I might be foregoing any and all reservations about the Age of Sigmar for this one. The greatest bromance of the Old World is returning, baby! Fuck. I'd even accept the ridiculous naming conventions if they do this right.

On the other hand though... They're really going to re-introduce Gotrek by the use of an Audio drama?

I'm not harping on Audio in any way, but doesn't that get into the flow of anyone's immersion, or is that just me?

To have the voices in your head, essentially your voices, every nuance perfectly yours, as perfect as you can make them, delivered unto you by proxy? With accents, pauses and speech patterns present that aren't yours...  mind language is a whole lot different than spoken language, you know.

I'm really not harping on audio dramas but, even as someone who listened to Slayer of the Storm God and, knowing that you can in fact provide, I'd be a lot more happier with a prose version.

This needs to be epic, and imagination would provide filler for all the possible blanks in a novel version, while auditory input from another party will definitely fill in a lot of those same blanks, and maybe not in a way that is all that conducive to what people want. For instance: Is a rural Brittish or Scottish accent really what's needed for Dwarves, excuse me; Duardin, in the Age of Sigmar?

-----

One of the biggest arguments I've heard, from those proponents of the Age of Sigmar, is that moving away from the old setting would give the option to do away with all the old tired stereotypes.
Now, Dwarfs have still been present in this new age, in their new incarnation; the Duardin, and as far as I'm aware they have not had any audio dramas yet.
This one one then; Realmslayer, will give us dwarf-accents in the age of Sigmar. The trouble with this then, is what will be the inevitable relapse into the scottish accent. They could've moved away from this, clean slate. But, because Gotrek is Gotrek and needs the accent, or else he wouldn't feel the same, be the same, it would necessitate a race-wide relapse, a slide backward into the speech patterns and vernacular of the Duardin as a whole. What was left up to interpretation in the magic of the written prose, voice actors will make absolute.
This is the kind of stuff I don't like, this is why I will always read the novel rather than listen to the audio book or dramatization. It's why I generally want to read the novels before they're adapted to the big screen, or the small one. Because auditory and visual input corrupts your story experience.
Someone else's speech/accent/patterns will inform what you see, whereas with the prose version, it's your inner voice that does all the work, fitting it sympatico to what suits you best.

Now this is completely subjective, and I know this is at least true for me. We're all different. What doesn't suit me will undoubtedly work for others. But, I at least will be passing on the audio drama box set.

Pain

This is the pain of a single minute lengthening into days, without release, without surcease.
Every moment free from its hateful self-loathing grasp is poisoned by the humming undertone of something wrong. I can not escape this because it has become my world, my view, my inturned mind.

It has become me and I can not look beyond myself. It's mad, it's crazy, it's wholly irrational and it hurts like only compassion can hurt. The kind eye looks and sees only distance. A clenched barrier of reproachful hurt, a rock with stony stare.

Uncertain, without response, we gaze but we move on.

Yet inside, left behind, I scream, I howl, I beg for aid.
But I can not reach because truth there is no aid, no option, no way out.

All there is is pain I can not share.
The animal pain, wounded, in blind incomprehension, in self-pitying pain, turning on those who'd wish it well.

The combat, the fight, the will to go exists only in itself, and it has lost its lustre.

And yet, I ask why?
Why bother with this flinching charade of continuing on. As if there is an investment on this hollow shambles that is weighted down with pain and fear and guilt.

And the silent anguished heart of me responds:

Because all there is is other's love, and other's hurt.

And if the beast can not salve, it can prevent.

-----

I'm tired of this like you wouldn't believe.

And I hate that I share this here. But hey, it needs an outlet somewhere.

Didn't think that this would be what the blog would be.

I always wanted to talk just about books, but there's way too much baggage with me for just that.

Guess this blog is gonna continue on being quite personal and you can count on the books waddling along with that as well.

Thanks for listening/reading anyway; it means the world.

Mine.

Dust is churning against the indigo sky in great whirlling motions. It leaves a hole in the firmament like the calm eye at the center of a hurricane.
The gale shakes the earth, obscuring everything at ground level. I cannot see the houses, the waiting crowd that I know is there, those eager, straining faces waiting to see what will happen here, sceptics and believers alike, the grinning face, eyes laughing with disdain and eyes filled with desperate, shining, brimming-wet belief.

There is a roaring as of a waterfall, as from my lips fly the last syllabels of the incantation.
My incantation.
My work, my creation, all I have worked for, so long, so hard. All those sacrifices made in preparation for this: An answer in demand to a terrible need.

The earth shakes, and a sound like thunder. And from the hazy, churning sky something comes racing down. The road is caved in and cracks split the asphalt with deafening sound, racing out. I stand unmoved, unmovable, as it buries itself into the ground at my feet. I am guarded from this violence. I made sure of it. Shingles, glass, brick, all fall from the houses around us with the force of its coming. His coming.

There is silence and then, after a few moments, a wailing.
It is a pathetic, wretched sound. As of a mute child, endeavoring to give voice to its stark despair. It is incomprehensible, but the anguish is unmistakable.

Dust drifts down from the sky, revealing slowly, by increments, the rest of the intersection.
Asphalt and traffic lights, turning green. Trees planted on the side of the road, in orderly intervals, stretching into the distance. This is where the two main streets intersect and even on a calm day the traffic makes speech impossible. I look at the crowd held back by so much blue.
I gaze at them impassively, though my heart, were they privy to its palpitations would tell them a different tale.

I look at them and then I look down.
To where it lies at my feet. It. Him.

A shriveled thing. Bald and emaciated, with long arms and spindly legs. A sunken rib-cage supporting a thin neck barely holding up a wobbly head.

I stare.

Human. Bizarre. Unhealthy. Sexless. In no shape fit for true existence. An impossible and impossibly weak body. But human, unmistakably so. His heaving breaths fill the soundless air. It cannot be.

"Why are you human? Why are you in this shape?" I ask of it. Him. My disbelief mounting. This can't be You. Was it my incantation that did this, did I make a mistake? I involuntarily shake my head. No. It is impossible.

God stares at me in His pathetic confusion, making mewling sounds in terrified, dawning realization.
A slobbering, nasal piping from a toothless mouth not shaped for articulation.

"Is this your shape? The shape of the all-powerful? Unending, limitless might..." I stare" ...and this is your shape?" It can not be.

I take a step back. A trick, it must be.

I feel my eyes narrowing as suspicion dawns. I find my rage coming back. The rage that has brought me here. That has brought Him here. Is this mockery?
"Do you taunt me... even now, when I have taken You from heaven? With everything I have done, all I have shown myself capable of, this is the shape You choose to show me?"

The mewling stops.

God stares and is silent. He is just looking.
His twisted mouth drawn to one side, for all the world smirking at my incomprehension. But no smile on that cretin's face. Too large eyes and a small forehead. A simpleton's stare above his tiny nose.

He is like a foetus. A thing unformed, defenseless and innocent.

I stare into His eyes and think I see a glimmer of something. Comprehension.

I feel something shift inside me in response.
Not innocent.

I feel my face twist as I look at Him. My fingers curve into claws as rage starts to flood my mind.
The street and the breathless crowd fall away.
It's just Him and me and nothing else. Finally. A perfect relationship between man and God. Sir? God will see you now. Oh, yes he will see me now. He can't even look away. The irony dances in my mind.

An old memory, distorted, echoes in my mind.

There will come a moment, when all men are almost dead. And then there will be the last man, and he will be alone with God. And then the moment will pass. The last man, alone with God. Am I that man?

A fleeting moment of melancholy and then purpose reasserts itself.
His eyes bulge as He sees it on my face. He knows why I have brought Him here.
The words, so long prepared, come back from where they've lain silenced and roar back forth into my mind.

For the worship is done, and now there is to be a reckoning.

He starts to scrabble desperately, atrophied muscles flailing as I advance on him, joining Him in His crater. Somehow he flops himself around, turning his back on me. And what else is new? He manages a few feet before he slides back down. He mewls again, a broken child. So pathetic. So helpless.
You'd think God would've made more of an entrance.

His hands reach out, besceeching, to outside of the pit He's made for himself this time as I grab hold of Him and scream in His face.
An inarticulate roar that makes Him flinch and squeeze his eyes shut. his limbs flinching together, like a spider in its final moments and oh, how apt this is. His hands grasp weakly, encircling my wrists, his drool sprays from his mouth as he heaves his desperate breaths.
One of his hands moves up and hits my face. I flinch, expecting... something.

But nothing comes.

he stares at me, my face inches from his own.
I scream again and there is only hate.

Hate for this nothing-god, this betrayer and deserter. this uncaring and unfeeling monstrosity. This manipulative god in his world built of lies. The faithless king in his broken kingdom.

I throw him down on the gravel, the cracked slabs of his coming.

I spit on him. No god of mine. Earn nothing but a grinding, clenching death. Hurt. Pain. Rage.

I lose myself as my fists start to pummel him.
A red rage is all there is. The futile weakling at my feet, in vain trying to block my blows.
his arms are stick-thin and they snap easily. Dry cracks in the dull twilight.
My screams mingle with his and they echo off of the houses. Perfect communion.

he screams as he finally feels what he, in his almighty wisdom has delivered us to.
But his physical pain is but a fraction of the agony I've been subjected to for so long.

his pain is as nothing to the torments of my mind. The self-induced fever. The self loathing and the all-reasoning, unflinching self-hatred. The endless years of fear and shame.
You dare scream at mere pain. My teeth grind down and clench and I can't speak for the fury in my head. I choke. My head pounds.

My fists break on a splinters of bone and my blood stains his pallid flesh. But the bones of his arms and legs and chest are healing as fast as I can break them. There won't be a lasting mark from this. We're still screaming, a roaring duet of question and answer, like lovers climaxing together, as another sound finally intrudes on my hearing.

The watching crowd, forgotten, comes roaring back with a mob mentality,
They tear at me as they drag me off him, their many-tongued chorus a mad banshee wail of hatred. Their fists rain down on me as they give voice to their hope and their outrage.
Grown men cry as they embrace the thing in the pit. They wipe my blood off of him. Even this I am denied. They carry him out and cradle him close. The mob strains forward to touch their God, their saviour, desperate for approbation.

Meanwhile my mob is breaking me and I rage in pain and fear as tears mingle with the blood flooding from my eyes. They drag me from the place of my greatest triumph, my greatest loss.
I shriek as they strip me from my clothes and their hatred fills my ears. In their hurry, in their hate strips of flesh come with the pieces of cloth.
They stab me. I don't even know with what. My mind is so far gone with fear and pain I have forgotten why I am here. The purpose for this summoning, the reason for this violence. This wasn't necessary. I could. I should. I'm sorry. Please.

Someone has a cable and they loop it over my head and throw it over the nearest traffic light, its lamp burning bright red. Together they haul me up, my feet kicking in the air.

A thousand screaming voices, and not a soul on my behalf.

As the cells in my brain start to burst, I watch, as they cloth him in vibrant colour and carry him on their shoulders.

A thousand screaming voices and all of them shouting for His love and attention.

And he, only with eyes for me.

I'm sorry.

He, only with eyes for me.

His bulging eyes, locked with mine.
There is meaning here, there is purpose here, but my starving brain is deaf and blind to it.
He holds my gaze as I die. His mewling, sobbing mouth voicing imprecations or earnest and comforting truths. It doesn't matter. He's drowned out completely by the crowd. Heh, again, and what else is new? Slowly, I cease to care and let go.

The evening wind blows gently through my open mouth. It caresses my swollen tongue.

From beyond the boundaries of life I look on.
I look on as they venerate this Hah Fallen God.

In worship, in a warring world, they put their hope on Him.

I sigh and pass on.

But thank God.
There is no judgment now.