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chlnacat · 8 years ago

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all the sad and lonely ones (2)

Chapter 2: The Fall of Grace and Glory Part I

The few days following his encounter with the Godbeasts are, in Richie’s eyes, rather dull. Maybe it’s for the best, because school has been awfully demanding and he finds himself rather busy. He figures that when you’re really busy, it’s better that you have less to do; that way, you have less to forget. As the days roll on he goes about his normal routine and waits patiently for something to happen, remembering that things will work out the way they are meant to and that it’s nothing he should waste time worrying about. Time wasted is time you never get back, and how much time did one person actually have, anyway? No one knows how much time they have, or what they can really afford to spare, and Richie is no different. So he doesn’t worry much about it, and fall progresses in sweaters and school bells. The leaves of the deciduous trees all burn red with autumn ember and weep to the ground like rubies. The northern winds carry the promise of winter’s kiss in every whisper. Everything was dying but it was not a time of death, rather, a period of mindful rest. It was time to sit back, and breath, and relax for a little bit, because come spring the ground would thaw and all things would born again. The wheel of time will once again reach 0 degrees and reset itself.

Richie comes home from school smelling like chalk, his hands silver and dirty with pencil lead. When Henry Bower’s sticks gum into his thick brown mop of hair and Richie almost cries, Bill comes over with a jar of peanut butter and helps him pull it out. Sometimes time feels like it’s bleeding slowly rather than passing at a consistent speed. It’s hard to tell the days apart, and all he ever truly knows is that he has plenty of homework to do, and that it’s really starting to get cold, and that he misses his friends when they’re not around, which has been often, hasn’t it? It’s one of those sad things you can’t really do much about, the way friendship becomes different when you’re older. Maybe everyone’s feelings are just more complicated now than they were when they were young and full of innocence and pureness. You grow up and lose that, your godliness and virtue. You grow up and suddenly everyone is lonely, and no one will admit to it or ever say or do anything to solve it. The loneliness comes crashing in like a swollen saltwater wave, one that wants to swallow you whole, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Richie feels it now, low in his throat. He swallows his loneliness down like a pill, because he knows it’s a bad idea to let the birds of sadness stay long enough to build their nests in your hair.

On the day that something finally does happen, and Richie couldn’t tell you what day it was, he smells flowers. A fragrant floral aroma hangs heavy above him when he wakes up; he stretches and yawns. Golden morning sunshine pours in through the window on the east side of the house. The sun outside glows hot and red in the sky, just beginning to rise over the shingled rooftops lining Richie’s cul-de-sac. He climbs out of bed and opens the window, letting the cold air of November come in and kiss him awake, and thinks of how absolutely strange it is that even the breeze blowing in from outside smelled like flowers. It was typical at this time of year for the air to smell like a number of things, in Richie’s opinion; chimney smoke, burning leaves, baking pies, apple cider, frost and northern pines. There were all kinds of scents Richie associated with fall, and even the coming hush of winter; this strong floral aroma was not one of them.

Richie shuts the window, the apples of his cheeks slightly flushed from the cold air. He gets dressed and heads downstairs for breakfast and slowly forgets about the queer flowery smell, even when it follows him to school. His mind eventually just accepts it, and suddenly it doesn’t seem so strange, and if he can distract himself for a long enough period of time, well, he can’t even smell it anymore. Besides, it’s not like there was anything wrong with the scent of flowers.

He was getting ready for bed when things started to feel bit strange. All the muscles in his body had that odd sensation of being both tight and loose at the same time, his skin felt both hot and cold at the same time. He felt both sick but not sick. It’s the same sort of strange unease he gets when he’s coming up on acid, uncomfortable but not entirely unpleasant, a bizarre plane of weirdness right before your mind fully lets go and plunges you into your trip, a bizarre universe where you’re just trapped in your skin waiting for something to happen. He’s brushing his teeth in the bathroom, feeling a bit washed out in the florescent light, when the minty green shine of the backsplash tiles suddenly seem much brighter. Yes, brighter, and softer- like they’re really small silk cushions and not really backsplash tile at all. They reflect the pale light in a way that just seems glitzy and retro. Everything in the bathroom suddenly takes on an enchanting soft, silky, ritzy quality. The shower curtain seems to move, seems to whisper to him, something he can’t quite hear, and the cool tiles of the floor feel so smooth beneath his feet that he almost wants to lay down and press his face into them. His bathroom has never looked quite so beautiful before, and as he stands here and thinks about how incredible and vivid the colors are in here, and how elegant and classy everything looks right now, like he’s a millionaire, a Beverly Hills movie star, he realizes that he’s definitely tripping face.

He’s heard of flashback trips, of course, and he’s trying not to let the fact that he hadn’t actually taken any acid bother him. After all, if life hands you a free acid trip, who are you to complain? If he had known more about flashback trips he would have felt that maybe it was an odd theory, because really, did he actually do acid often enough to have flashbacks like this? And did flashback trips always feel quite so strong? Again, when life hands you a free trip, there’s no point in questioning it. You don’t look a gifthorse in the eye, right? Clearly God was in this bathroom tonight, and God was looking out for him and wanted him to be happy. He sits on hard the edge of the clawfoot tub for a good couple minutes, looking around and laughing. What a posh, glamorous bathroom he had. It was like something out of Better Homes and Gardens. He can’t get over the fact that he has such a nice bathroom; even the way the silver sink tap handles reflect light was soft, stunning, somehow luxurious. He’s laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, because, up until now, he hadn’t really looked at his bathroom like this. It had always been just a bathroom.

He decides it’s probably not such a terrible idea to get out of the bathroom, because truly, as grand as it was, he could think of a lot of other places he would rather spend his trip than in a bathroom. He makes his way towards the door, having to pause for a moment and look away, tears welling in his eyes, because the magnificence of the light bouncing off the glass doorknob was too much for him for a moment. It was such a divine sight, like a billion tiny diamonds shards, glinting and shimmering before him, twinkling with gaseous purity, and part of him felt like that kind of purity was inside of him too, and maybe inside of others he would meet along his way. The knob feels slick and oily to the touch. He opens the bathroom door and steps out into strange daylight.

He’s in a low, grassy meadow, brimming with flowers. The bathroom door behind him seems to have blinked out of existence. The fragrance that he had been smelling all day is present, more pungent than before, hanging thickly and sweetly in the air; but there’s more there, too, isn’t there? He can smell the sweetness of honey and buttermilk, mixing together with the underlying dryness of dead sea salt. The temperature and presence of the air reminds him of June, plainly and simply. The meadow floor is soft grassy green and pregnant with flowers that reach up gaily towards the sun. He can recognize quaking grass and crested dogtail shoots, as well as field lilies, their yellow bells incandescent with filtered sunlight. Patches of sweet smelling wild flowers bloom up all around and bob in a gentle breeze, some with stigmas pointed up towards the sun as though praising it’s glory and it’s lifeforce. Butterflies and bumblebees hover near him, bouncing from one flower to the next, their bodies fat and cheerful. It’s a very calm sort of place, and for a minute he just sits, and he can hear the cry of meadow birds and maybe, somewhere not too far away, the garbled babble of a stream. The ground underneath his is moist, but it’s not something he really seems to mind. That’s the thing about wet pants, and the scent of flowers. Once you get used to them, you don’t notice them so much.

The meadow is low and large, out skirted on three sides by a thick summer-green forest. The remaining edge is lined by a road, its asphalt soft and gray, running parallel to the meadow and winding off into some kind of far away place, a strange sort of quiet that Richie couldn’t see. He had a feeling he had no business with the road, regardless. At least for now. He spots something moving out of the corner of his eye and turns just in time to see a small white rabbit dive behind a scrub bush. It makes him smile, a warm feeling swelling in his gut. Slowly a pair of white ears peak out from behind scrub bush, and he can feel the rabbit’s gentle, timid gaze resting on him. He feels pleasant and relaxed in every sense of the word and yawns and pops his back, thinking it wouldn’t be so bad to just lay here and fall asleep under a blanket of warm sunbeams. Yes, he could lay here and count angels in the fat milky clouds passing above him until he fell asleep on a bed of forget-me-nots, and it would probably feel wonderful, it would probably be the best sleep of his life. He yawns again, thinking it probably won’t hurt to at least rest his eyes, if not for just a moment, when a voice rings loud in his head. It’s the curiously pleasant voice of Mr. Pestilence; “If you stay too long, or if the fire goes out, you might not be able to get back to your world.” Sudden panic tears through Richie, claws it’s way up his throat, tasting of saltwater. The thought of sleep was a distant memory in his mind now. There is no fire out here in this whimsical daydream of a meadow. He has no way of getting home right now, even if he wanted to, and it’s terrifying and brings forth the powerful feeling of helplessness. As beautiful as this meadow is, he needs to leave, so he can figure out just what it is he’s come here for.

He begins walking now, scoping out the edges of the woods from behind the thick frames of his eyeglasses. The sounds of nature harmonize together and ring out to fill all the open space in this ragged flower paradise, and although there’s all sorts of life bursting around him, Richie can’t help but feel a lonely sort of feeling as he walks along. There’s a sadness and an emptiness that comes with not being able to communicate with the things around you, and he wishes he had someone who he could talk to, someone who would understand and who would walk with him in this strange green place, and maybe then he wouldn’t feel so afraid or so alone. It’s probably a silly and selfish thought in the first place; there’s someone else he has to worry about, isn’t there? There has to be a reason why he’s here, someone that he has to help. He can feel loneliness set in like an invisible fog, one that’s hanging in the air, clinging damp to his shirt. This place is gloomy beautiful, doleful June serenity bathed in memories of skinned knees and laughing children.

He can feel the warmth of the sun on his back like a jacket, and finally his seeking eyes land on a small mouth in the treeline at the edge of the meadow. Something tells him that that’s the place to be, that he really ought to go check that place out, so he starts meandering his way over. Although his feet are covered by only socks, nothing seemed to be hurting him; there was no pricker grass, or thorn bushes, or stinging nettles here in this flatland. He passes by a cluster of milkweed plants, some with their pods burst open like swollen bellies, puffing their white fluff outward like fat preening birds. He wanders past a rather large blueberry bush, where he stops to pick some of the berries. They’re plump and dark and perfect; their taste is just the perfect balance of sweetness to tart, just as a blueberry should be. In fact, Richie thinks they’re probably the best blueberries he’s ever tasted. Their flavor explodes vibrant on his tongue as he pops them between his teeth, juices staining his lips and fingers.

He manages to regain some sense of self control and pull himself away from the fruit bush, his eyes still resting on the opening between the trees that lead into the forest. More birds call out, soaring over his head. When he finally reaches the mouth, he finds a path of fallen pine needles leading deep into the thicket of trees. The leaves overhead, and the sunlight raining lazily down the open spaces between them, create a dazzlingly and gleaming dark emerald canopy. The smell of fresh flowers is slowly replaced with the smell of pine and bark and Richie’s mouth tastes of milk. The forest noises converge and orchestrate a symphony; they tell him the tale of a warm day in mid-June, a day where it was supposed to rain but never did; the skies had been clear and blue and the people had rejoiced, their laughter ringing. Sunlight was power and a gift to the land. The forest was familiar and home to many creatures, great and small. As Richie walked he began to understand the story of the trees, he began to understand what they were trying to tell him in the way they pointed their leaves and curled their mighty roots. He sees more rabbits, their small white bodies scurrying away from his noise, and in a quick moment catches a flash something large and white, moving behind the trees. It’s only for a second, of course, and then it’s gone, like it had never existed in the first place.

Richie isn’t sure of how long he travels along this pine needle path. The trees rising around him feel safe, and as he wanders deeper and deeper into the unfamiliar woods, he’s filled with odd nostalgia and a strange sense of purpose. As the path winds down into a valley, flowers begin to bloom beneath his feet again, deep purples and magentas and shades of buttery yellow. He comes out into a small clearing, blinking as his eyes readjust to the sun.

Sprawled out on their backs atop the fresh and gentle sweetgrass lay two small girl angels, their intestines spilling out from large tears in their stomachs and clumping together in a bloody knot on the ground between them. Aside from this carnage, their intensities laid out, tied together, the angels are lovely. Their skin glows effervescent; it’s creamy, peachy pink, blushed with sunlight. One of the angels has golden locks of hair, bouncing curls that tumble down and land just below her shoulders; the other’s hair hangs in a similar fashion but was a deep, mousy brown, similar to the color of Richie’s own hair. Atop their heads rested crowns of thorns and purple-pink and white dahlias. The loose dresses they wore also matched, hanging from their shoulders like greek robes; the angel with the darker hair was dressed in blue, the other pink. Both their wounds ran vertically down their stomach, staining their dresses, and their spilling intestines stains the sweetgrass below with their blood, little pools and spatters that seems oddly innocent in the deepness of the afternoon

For a moment Richie stares at these vored angels wonders and if they are dead, and who had hurt them and why, and was starting to feel awfully sore about the whole scene, because really, who wanted to come across a pair of dead, vored angels? But then the angel with the mousy brown hair sits up and looks at him curiously, her pale blue eyes catching in the sunlight. She nudges the form next to her, but the blonde angel seems to be sleeping. She nudges again, and this time, the blonde angel stirs, sitting up and wiping at her eyes.

“Alright, alright, what’s going on?” The blonde angel asks sleepily. “Can’t a girl take a nap?”

“Grace, over there. It’s a boy.”

“A boy?” The blonde angel turns to look at Richie now, and he can see for the first time that she’s blind. Her eyes have no color to them, no shine; they are simply milky white and cloudy. Richie gets the feeling she can somehow see him anyway. Surely a creature as magnificent as an angel wouldn’t be handicapped by something as trivial and human as a bad set of eyes.

“Hello?” Richie calls out to them, hoping that his voice sounds upbeat and cheerful. “My name is Richie. Are you two alright, there?”

“Oh, I have a bit of a stomach ache, but I’ll live,” The angel with the brown hair tells him. “We had just laid down for a quick nap in the grass, it’s always so soft... I’m sorry if we’re in your way.”

“Oh, no,” Richie tells her. “To be honest, I’m not fully sure where I’m going. I might be a bit lost- really, I’m not sure.”

“If you’re not sure where you’re going, what are you do wandering around in the forest? Don’t you know all kinds of creatures live out here?”

“There’s someone out here that I’m supposed to be finding, I think,” Richie tells the angels. “See, I came here from somewhere very far away, and I have to find someone with a story to tell me.”

“Oh, we have a story, don’t we, Glory?” The blind angel perks up, and her golden curls bob as turns head towards Richie and seeks him out with her milky eyes. “I’m Grace, by the way, and this is Glory.”

#writing #prose #atsalo

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chlnacat · 8 years ago

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all the sad and lonely ones

Chapter One: Pestilence

Richie Tozier has his first encounter with a God while tripping on acid outside of the Seven-Eleven when he's seventeen years old. At first he isn’t sure if what he’s seeing is even a God at all, because it’s frame is so emaciated and it’s face is filled with flies. They crawl out of the creature’s mouth and empty eye sockets and nasal cavity, and fill Richie with a sick kind of fear and the sense of total wrongness. Up until this moment of the trip, his visuals had been okay, great even. For a while there had been an explosion of colors, ones Richie had never seen before, colors that could not be picked up by the cones of any human eye, and he had wept at their glory, feeling a bit silly for doing so. Then, as he had walked along towards the convenience store in hopes of picking up a gallon of orange juice, trip juice, he had seen entire kingdoms rising and falling before him. The streets of Derry were filled with towering, crumbling castles, crumbling fountains, great tree fortresses that stretched endlessly into the sky, waterfalls cascading down their mighty bark. The ancient kingdoms beckoned him, but just as he was starting to close in on them, the scene would change. He walked backwards in time for a while, through the cobbled streets of what he suspected was the eighteen hundreds. Men and women rushed around him in period clothing; horses, dragging carriages of people along behind them, plodded along across the smooth stone of the street. The heavy, warm scent of pipe tobacco filled the air. The scene changed again as he came across the glowing green and red sign of the store, and for a moment all he can see is neon signs and flashing lights, even when he closes his eyes. It feels like he’s standing in the middle of Times Square, and he can actually see the tall double decker tour buses, the crowds of people pushing their way to get on.

Then he notices the beast, the God, the strange thing watching him from the shadows, and he stops for a moment, because up until this point he was still very much aware of the fact that none of what he’s seeing was real or held any ground and suddenly, he wasn’t so sure of this fact. Whatever this thing was, it felt more corporeal than the trip visuals, and the closer he moved towards it, the more a great sickness grew within him. The smell of rotting meat hits him like a wall, an awful smell, and it makes him want to turn away, but he finds that he can’t. Part of him feels bad for this beast, and something was telling him that it didn’t mean him any harm, and that it was only sad and that it probably wasn’t it’s own fault that it smelled so awful. He’s close enough to spot small, open black holes dotting the God’s elongated face. More flies crawl out of these holes, spreading their wings, iridescent. Some buzz lazily towards him, and the stench of dead rotting flesh burns his nose. The creature’s body is long and thin, and although it is naked it has no discernable sex parts. Richie gets the sense that it’s a masculine presence.

He is aware of no other noise than the flies buzzing. He is not aware of any cars that happen to pass by, or the soft white light pouring out from inside the store, or the low hum of electricity in the air, though he can feel that, can’t he? He is alone out here with this creature, and whatever or whoever it is pulls it’s mouth up into a smile.

“You probably don’t want to come too much closer,” it calls to him, and it’s voice is ringing, pleasant. It’s very out of character from such a menacing looking beast but Richie finds it comforting, somehow familiar in a way he can’t put his finger on. “I have a cold.”

“Who are you?” Richie asks, and his own voice sounds strange in his ears. He halts his movements and stares at the beast in wonder; a fly lands on it’s face and crawls into it’s gaping, black eye socket. Another fly crawls out. The holes on his face are seeping with thick whitish-yellow puss. All in all, the God looks very sickly, and being near him makes Richie feel very sick.

“I’m Pestilence,” the pleasant voice tells him. Dimly, in the back of his mind, Richie thinks that none of his hallucinations had ever spoken to him before. “I have a story I was hoping you’d listen to. That is, if you’d like.” He says it in a way that’s almost sort of sad. “I wouldn’t want to impose. I know being around me has a tendency to make most people feel rather ill.”

“I think I’ll be fine,” Richie tells him, though his stomach still feels like it’s doing flips, and his skin feels sore and tender, like when you have the flu. “But maybe we should go somewhere else? I’ll look like an awful loon talking to myself out here if no one else can see you.”

“Oh! Well, if you don’t mind a little bit of traveling, I know just the spot. Would you go there with me?”

Richie thinks for a second, pondering what to do. What does one do when some strange type of sickly godbeast invites you to go traveling with him? For a moment, Richie has to close his eyes, because a vast starscape is exploding in front of them. Even when he closes his eyes, the stars are still there, and he feels a tear slip down his cheek as he thinks vaguely, all the stars in the universe are in my eyes. For a moment he surrenders himself to the vast nothingness, to the shimmering and twinkling of the stars laid out before him. Something he had read once crosses his mind, now, some old William Faulkner quote Bill probably would have loved; “Cady got the box and set it on the floor and opened it. It was full of stars. When I was still, they were still. When I moved, they glinted and sparkled. I hushed.”

The tears leaking out of his eyes are filled with thousands of tiny, dazzling stars, dancing like diamonds against his soft and freckled face. A fly lands on his nose briefly before taking off, and Richie opens his eyes. The stars are gone now, and he’s staring into the face of Pestilence. Pestilence smiles at him, and a fly crawls from his exposed nasal cavity and down into his mouth.

“I don’t think I’d mind a bit of traveling,” he finally speaks. “But, would you mind telling me where we’re going?”

“Only to my study; I think you’ll find it rather nice there. I have a lot of books, and there’s a fireplace. It’s warm there. I think you’ll like it. You’ll just have to remember to keep your distance. Like I said, I have a cold.”

“Well, where do you live?” Richie asks. “How are we getting there?”

“If you come with me, I’ll show you. Mind that you stay at least ten steps behind me.” And Richie does mind this, because the closer he gets to the creature, the sicker and weaker he feels, and he understands now that if he were to get close enough to actually touch the God, he would die.

Richie is lead around the side of the building. Light catches like orbs in his eyes and refracts in front of him in geometric patterns. The store looks cartoonish, crooked, out of place. Pestilence stops when he comes across a puddle of black oil.

“Well, this is the easiest way to get there,” He says, turning back to Richie. “Now, I want you to do something for me, kid. You see that puddle of oil?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m going to jump in it, and I’m going to disappear. You’re going to wait twenty seconds, and do the same thing. You got that?”

Richie nods, feeling strange. “But if I go in, how will I get back?”

“Don’t worry about that, kid. Just remember, wait twenty seconds.” With that the beast slips into the puddle and is gone, disappearing into the thick darkness like he had never existed in the first place, and for a moment Richie wonders if it hadn’t just been a strange hallucination after all.

Five seconds pass. Ten. Fifteen… Richie can feel an odd humming in his bones, the same kind of humming that came from old fluorescent light bulbs. Twenty seconds. Richie steps into the puddle of oil, unsure of what to expect. He finds his feet slipping, his body giving way to total blackness.

Richie rockets down into complete and utter darkness, darkness so vast and endless that it made him forget for a moment what light even is, what it meant or how it felt. A scream tears itself from his throat, but there is no sound out here in this eternal space, there is no screaming once you’re actually inside the void, all you can do is fall endlessly, faster, faster, screaming silently while every last bit of pure light gets sucked from you.

For a terrifying moment, Richie thinks his body will burst into flames, but then he’s landing with a hard THUNK on some polished mahogany floor, and all the light comes rushing back and hits Richie with a feeling so intense the closest thing he could compare it to was an orgasm. His whole body shudders, and hot vomit climbs his throat and erupts out in a cough. He feels awfully sorry for whoever has to clean the floor.

He looks up, eyes finally adjusting to the return of light, and finds that he’s in a vast library. The walls are lined with tall rows of shelves, the kind tall enough that you need a ladder to reach the books even halfway to the top. The shelves are filled with books, their bindings old and tattered, their smell ancient and pungent in the air, noticeable even over Pestilence’s rotting meat stench. There’s a thick layer of dust covering them, like they haven’t been touched in years. Two low chandeliers hang above him, each large enough to hold about fifty or so candles. Their flames dance, waxing and waning, dancing in a breeze that didn’t exist, not in whatever world this was. Pestilence sits behind a large oak desk, his body rotting. Strewn across the desk are scrolls, inkwells, large quills of phoenix feathers, plates of rotting food. To Richie’s right is a great fireplace, roaring with life; it’s flame seems brighter, redder, somehow hotter than anything he’s ever seen before. Flies buzz in the air.

“Welcome, welcome, stay over there, won’t you? Not that I don’t want you to get any closer, but, well, you know.” Pestilence smiles sadly. “Anyway, don’t worry about the vomit. I’m used to that... I’m sorry about the mess, though. You see, it’s been an awful long time since I had any visitors here. It gets rather lonely, and the lonelier I get, the harder it is to keep things clean. You know how it goes. Have a seat, won’t you?”

He gestures to something behind Richie, and Richie turns to find a chair, it’s cushions thick and upholstered with a faded floral fabric. He sits in it, and stares at Pestilence. “You said you have a story?”

“Well, yes. My story, though maybe it’s not a good one. It’s certainly not the best one, but it’s mine, and you’ll listen to it, won’t you?”

Richie sits quietly and listens as Pestilence explains how lonely it is to be the God of disease and plague, how nobody ever loved him or cared about him or wanted to be his friend, how terribly alone he had always felt. Pestilence tells him that for a long time he was angry, and that his heart was so full of hurt and pain that it ossified into hatred, and the hatred was a plague within itself, one that consumed everything. Pestilence had wiped out many lands, brought entire kingdoms to their knees, but no matter how much disease and death he spread, he never felt any better about anything. He was mighty lonely, and no matter what he did, the loneliness ate away at him like the flies on his face. Eventually his anger had died out, like a dwindling flame, and the wisdom of his age took over. Pestilence didn’t want to kill anymore, or to hurt anyone ever again, not unless he absolutely had to- and even then.... All the pain he brought upon others had done nothing to help console his own suffering, and he figured he couldn’t help that he was the God of sickness and disease, but there was no need to infect others with his misery. He had retired from his days of demolishing civilizations and now spent most of his time writing novels, or so he tells Richie.

“There are a lot of others like me,” Pestilence tells him. “Souls that are just lonely, and sad, and hurt. And maybe people are afraid of them, because they don’t understand, and maybe that doesn’t help anything. It’s a terrible feeling to be lonely, isn’t it? I’m sure you know the feeling.” Richie nods his head, and feels sad. He does know the feeling. He thinks it’s a terrible thing, what Pestilence has to go through, and he can’t imagine the pain of being a creature such as that, one no one could ever love, or get close to. He can’t imagine that, no, but he understands what Pestilence is saying about loneliness. Here in this library, he can feel the weight of it- not his just own loneliness, the one brewing deep inside, set into his bones, but a whole world’s worth of loneliness. It’s a terrible burden, really, and he wipes at his misty eyes.

“Well isn’t there any way to help them?” Richie asks now. “The lonely ones. Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“There’s nothing I can do,” spoke the beast. “I’m pestilence. I scare people. I make them sick. But you, well, there’s something you can do, of course. You’re doing it right now, you don’t even know it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re sitting here right now, talking to me. Listen, everyone out there has a story. You have a story, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Sometimes, all people need is a listening ear. Someone to tell their stories too. That’s what I wanted, right, and see how happy I am now?” He does seem happier, Richie notices, and it makes him feel good. He wants to help rid the world’s creatures of their loneliness and pain; he wants to more than anything, like it was something he was meant to do all along. He wonders if maybe that wasn’t the case.

“So all I have to do is listen to their stories?”

“Everyone out there has something to say, or a reason why they are the way they are, or why they do the things they do. Some people are meant to be collectors of these stories, the way I collect the stories that I come up with in my head. My novels. Only, you don’t have to write these stories down, if you don’t want to. You just have to listen to them.”

“But how do I find them? The lonely creatures?”

“When the time is right, you’ll find them. You just will. Some of them might scare you, but it’s okay. Be kind to them. Fate has a mysterious way of working itself out, wouldn’t you agree? The things that are meant to happen, well, they happen.”

“So this is my fate, then? This is what I’m meant to do?”

“Look at it however you want. All I can tell you is, you have a gift. There’s something special inside of you, a goodness- you’re pure light, you don’t even know it. There are a lot of creatures out there that could use your help.”

It felt strange, hearing all of this coming from some sickly Godbeast. Richie felt a certain type of warmth within him, a feeling like something big was happening, or like things were about to change in a major sort of way. “So when the time comes, I’ll just know?”

“You’ll just know.”

Richie can’t help but doubt himself a little. Perhaps Pestilence was wrong, perhaps there was nothing special to him at all- but if that’s the case, how does he find himself here? And why? It has to mean something.

“Well, you should probably get home now,” Pestilence tells him. “I haven’t much more to say. But I have something to tell you, one last thing. In your travels, you’re going to come across a lot of places just like this one, some a little scarier. Try not to be afraid, but don’t stay too long. If you stay too long, or if the fire goes out, you may not be able to get back to your world.”

“If the fire goes out?”

“The fire. It’s how you get back home. And remember, the oil is how you get here. Jump into the fire now, won’t you? I promise it won’t hurt- I know it feels hot. You just have to trust me, alright?”

Richie can feel his heart thudding dully in his throat and he slides out of the chair and walks over to the fire burning brightly underneath a stone mantle. It’s hot, and he’s afraid, unable to understand how it won’t burn him. He gives a nervous sort of look at the emaciated God, who offers him a reassuring smile. “Goodbye, Richie. I hope I see you again one day, though, maybe it’s for the best if I don’t. I’m awfully ill.”

Richie wonders for a moment how the creature knows his name, because he’s sure he never told it. Then, with a hesitant step, he pushes himself into the fire. For a second, all he sees is flames, all he can smell is smoke, but the beast was right, it doesn’t hurt. For a minute there’s roaring nothingness, and then Richie is suddenly jerking upright in his own bed.

A fly, fat and lazy, buzzes across the room and lands on the wall above him.

#writing #atsalo #prose

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