Thread: This is for s's and g's

[I return to type a little further. As always, thank you for your patience- Zef]

"Only fools look for death," he whispered.
"Then I'm a fool."
"More than you know." He stepped towards me and was surprisingly quick. Unconsciously I stepped back a bit. "Do you know how many people have come looking for me? Are you the fourth or the four hundredth? Revenge, depression, it's all the same, all the time. They want me to free them. But I'm a prisoner too!" He swept his arm wildly, showing me all the rows of empty pews. "They're always here! And I can't LEAVE them, and they TAKE me with them!" He was shouting now and I was shaking a little, but I am a determined person and I had a dark purpose.

"Kill me, please."
"I CAN'T! Don't you see? Or I would have been dead MONTHS ago!" He looked down again, and thank God that face was off me. He calmed like someone had let the air out of him, deflating. "I only know when people die." That boy drew closer, like his feet didn't even need his permission to move. "I really feel for you, I do. But I know you have a long life ahead of you and there's not a thing I can do about it."

I didn't take one step back this time, but I felt like my blood had turned to mercury. "I could kill myself right now, and then you'd be wrong." It wasn't as strong as I'd hoped.

"No, you can't. You won't. I've TRIED." His lips came up over his gums and I wanted to throw up. "Inescapable destiny, they've told me."

Did you go to Sunday school when you were young? I heard the story of the man touching the hem of Jesus' cloak and being cured. That was the only thing in my mind. "If you won't kill me, I'll make you!" His shirt was greasy and shifted in my grasp.

The pain was so intense I thought I was dying, or having an aneurysm, or my head was splitting into two. The information came all at once. It might have been an epiphany, but there was not a thing divine about it. There were all the compostela, gray, smokey, blurring together with the pews and there was the noise of a thousand voices talking and a laughing girl that wasn't so very young and a terribleness that invaded me right down to the bone and she had created everything for him and now owned him and threw him around like an old doll and she was two blocks away and she knew I was coming.

I couldn't tell the screaming apart from the vision until he wrenched himself away from me. It was then I realized that our voices had intertwined in a uniform expression of outrage and pain against the entire world, but I couldn't forget the pain was something I had made. I was still very cold, but the sweat poured off me and I lurched forward, hoping the pew I leaned on would hold. He just crumpled on the floor. The compostela was gone, and I had to fight to keep the picture of the girl in my head like you would a dream in the morning.

"I'm just a prisoner.... a prisoner...." He was only consoling himself.

That coldness I felt had settled in my chest. I left him there to deal with his own demons, because, as they say, I had a date with inescapable destiny.

i need to restart reading...not sure whats going on but it sounds like that book we were making

And inescapable destiny was beautiful. The two blocks passed like seconds on a cosmic clock. She was beautiful, like honey made into human form and chained to bone. Hair that looked black in the light, her lips scared me to think she might speak, and eyelashes that, when she blinked, were like two black birds taking flight from her cheeks every time her bright eyes opened. There was a room there. Do I remember it? The door, did I enter it? Some apartment in the two block radius of a church where I lost faith in myself. That was where I met as close to a god as I may ever see.

"Do you like to dance, ____?" She said my name and I nearly cried.
"Dancing?" I was stunned, I was numb. I was human and she divine.
"When you dance, you either lead someone around, or you are led." Without her mentioning the word control I knew I was willingly under hers.
"Pretty soon you'll ask me to make a world for you, just like I've done with a hundred others."

Make a world? What was that? Some voice from within told me I knew better, but I couldn't leave it alone. "You make worlds?"
"Yeah, and we're a lot alike because of it. You made a people, I made them worlds. Well some of them anyway." I noticed the voice that had brought me to wiping my eyes, the voice who I thought held eternity inside it, was changing. The pitch was higher, the words simpler.

"I can make you see or smell or taste whatever I want." And suddenly I was on the beach, waves crashing, and there was a heard of unicorns trotting towards me. Then I blinked and I was back staring at the girl who made worlds, and I understood.
"I have a lot of people locked up here. They didn't want to live such bad horrible lives, so I made new ones for them. They're happy. And you're going to ask me to make you happy."

So I did.
"Well, I could make you a world where you never did any of this, or a world where you could find all of us you made and kill us, and you'd be a big hero! Wouldn't that be nice?"
"You want me to live in a dream world?"
"Didn't you just ask Zachie, I mean la compostela santa, to kill you? A dream is better than death."
"And what about all those other people you keep mentioning. Do you have them trapped too?"
"I trapped some of them, mostly the bad ones, and made them live in the bad worlds they made, but didn't know about. That's what I would do to you. Make you see what it is to be left alone by your mom and dad because you can tell them when the phones going to ring and they don't even know that you can see their death, your own death, everybody's death."

My head started to pound and I thought she was killing me. Inescapable destiny to divine retribution.

"Most of them were hurting and I made them a better world. They came like you, and I fixed them."
"How many are there?" And without moving I saw the long halls the place had, maybe it was a hotel and what seemed like endless doors, but I could see through the doors and hear people laughing, talking, crying, begging, all to themselves. In a second I could only see her again.

"So I have to admit, I don't know what to do. You're not like any of the people I've helped or punished before, but since I know what I'm going to do, it doesn't matter." Was her voice getting younger? Her hair was shortening, that was certain. She might have been shrinking. It's hard to explain, but dealing with these people just drained me. Fried all my senses.

"You have something in you too. You think you made a people, but you didn't just leave them. You're a creator, and creators don't just leave their creations. They fix whats wrong and add to the good." Her hair was now a pigtail, rather messy and off to one side. She only was up to my waist now. "People like me have a hard time keeping up whatever it is we can do around you. I guess it's hard to meet your creator. There are some really bad people out there that you made, and it's your duty to get rid of them."

"Kill them?I don't think I can do that."
"You already have, well at least I've already seen it. And you have to. They can kill everyone if they want to! But they won't, because you'll get them."
"How can you be so sure of everything?"
"Because I know everything. And you want a purpose, you want to fix what you did, now do it."

It seemed so simple when she explained it to me. And I wanted to get out of there. She was shrinking and changing. It was like looking at a car wreck that was all your fault.
"You're going to leave now, because you can't stand looking at me." The voice sounded like she could he been five now.
"No, it's not that-"
"I already know, remember?" When she pointed at her brain and giggled, she didn't look so divine. I stated to leave. "Oh, one last thing. Can I have a hug?"

Her disguise was gone, or I made her drop it, or she couldn't keep it up with her 'creator', or whatever it was, a girl around five with dirt smeared all over her face and looking a little hungry wrapped her arms around my legs and said "Thanks, Daddy. And I know you want to free those people I helped, but you don't get to do that yet."

As I was walking, it occurred to me that everything from the moment I met her could be my own illusion world she made. I'd never even know.