Feed the Muse: Twenty-Four (Vol. III) [√]

[ howl's moving castle ]

The footsteps get darker as time passes. The carrier's guilt and sin weighing heavier as the days blur into a monotonous shade of gray. Nothing feels golden anymore. The magic of his youth dulls into the kind of comforting numbness meant for the cold-blooded. He cloaks himself in glamour and proceeds to hold the strings of his world together. The end justifies the means. He draws blood across the walls as a reminder of the penance he has to pay for the many tragedies of his roots.

He bears his figure well. Long arms, longer legs. Hair brushed back, slick and black. Clothes fashioned to move with him like second skin. The rings on his fingers glitter under the sun as he makes his way to mingle with the crowd. The cross necklace swings back and forth on his chest, the chain a metallic net of his unanswered prayers. He never was religious despite being brought up with the book of life. The appeal of god tastes like tar under his tongue. Forced beliefs never made him better. It only fueled his rage and tempted his demons to light. 

His teeth aches from the control he pushes onto himself. The monsters inside of him rebel to wreck havoc. If allowed to roam free, they would burn the world down with him. He is the greatest weapon to be created against himself. The antidote to a life of misery falls on the blade and yet his courtship with death is complicated. The wings on his back itch to burst from his spine and take him far into the atmosphere where he could scream his voice hoarse. Sweat dots his forehead as his vision narrows and turns hazy. He could feel the tinge of red creeping across the white. At twilight, he is nothing but a creature of bloodlust and violence.

The energy he expends reaps back tenfold. His body takes the brunt of the unleashed power, eating itself from the inside out, the decay a parasite that feeds on the self-restraint. With no other vessel, the greatest magician in the world becomes a host to the dark arts. The pain is blinding for the martyr. He thinks that piling up the good over his bad can cancel out the darkness that brews within him. But the devil works harder on his soul. He could feel it taking over his senses, far too strong and ominous for him to dispel. He falls a slave to the king of hell. 

He loses pieces of himself on the way home. There is nothing to do but surrender to the onslaught of agony that came with the transformation from man to a bird of prey. No use ignoring the call of the hunt he harbors inside his heart of ash. The more he fights against it, the more it pins him down with a sinister grin. He knows that come morning, he will not be the same person anymore.

"Sweet dreams, little magician."

He considers praying but there is no salvation for the wicked nor the damned. 

And god, he was both, was he?