The Fifth Annual Writer Games: The Fall

The Fall of Lucifer - Benthic Derval

And the oceans have begun to dry.

There's a boy still awake in the mountains. He hasn't slept for a hundred years, cheeks the rosy tint of someone so sleepy, so dazed. When he grins it's out of fear, shivering against the cold of molten snow and the frostbitten sun. He's been here awhile now. Perhaps it's time to leave, then?

His fingers are painted. He's no artist asleep in the woods, but a warrior atop the bluffs; it's blood that coats his skin, once warm and now dried over his freckles. He's still awake because the blood isn't his. He's still awake because he found the darkness in the middle of the day, and now the thought of it during the night is too troublesome. One cannot imagine the nightmares before they arrive. And they arrived a long time ago. They arrived at the beginning of time.

And the skies aren't breathing. And the skies are black and blue.

The boy inhales, his chest stretched out like stones becoming gravel. Who was once sandstone in a castle beside roaring waves is now just sediment and sand, weaker and frail, a slim piece of what used to be. Last night, the boy in the cliffs dreamed of skeletons and swords and knights on their horses; he yearned for a battle where he could easily soar, a war that wasn't so unwinnable; he wished for wind on his skin, and he hoped for color in the cities. He admitted to himself that he wants to die. That among all the dead things, it is impossible to stay alive.

The dead things. Children in their Game. A man forged by a blacksmith in the hills. The boy's red hand falls to his side and lands on a stomach—one that isn't rising, and isn't falling. His thumb tugs at a piece of loose clothing until it tears and falls into the dirt. He touches skin. Numbness. The dead things and children in this Game.

He hasn't cried in many years, and the boy isn't crying now. There are lips and fingerprints and collarbones in the snow. There's hunger and there's blood, a wound and a knife. The boy rocks back and forth and moans at the stars in the afternoon, so afraid to be alone, so relieved to be the one who lived, so devastated to be the last one standing. He rarely moves his hand away from the body, stiff and cold and eyes still open. The boy can't close them. Not yet.

There are gods and then there are men. There's silver and then there's gold. The boy awake in the mountains thought he was nothing until the morning his everything died. He used to think about all the universes that he'd been killed long ago, places where the sun is grey and the ground has opened up beneath him. He thinks about the worlds where his breath has stopped, worlds where his picture painted the skyline with an anthem singing his name. A galaxy where his blood waters the dirt. A century he lives unafraid. A lifetime spent with his hand on this boy's chest, and feeling it inhale against his touch.

He stays there, perhaps for hours. Swaying. Letting the air wander over his shoulders as the heat of the late evening turns into night. Perhaps he watches the moon appear (slowly, as if in mourning itself), and perhaps he waits for it to be full. Then, he closes his eyes, opens them again, and removes his hand from the mountains. He shivers, his least favorite thing.

There is love and then there is fear. Both take a heart, entrap the lungs; both make your cheeks flush and foreheads sweat, knees quake and wrists quail. They dig into the teeth and scrape beneath the nails. Burn the skin. Burn everything. But still, there is one and then the other. One that's warmth and another that's frost. One holds, one bites. A love of the mountains carries its peaks into space, but a fear of them buries you in six feet of snow.

The boy in the wind had loved what he'd feared, and feared what he'd loved. He'd breathed to stay calm and yet yearned to feel the other boy's breath on his neck, words like steel overcome by rust. A gaze that had erased every single universe he was dead, if only because he was so alive in this one.