Ruin Maketh Me

80 - The truth about gods

     I jolt awake.
     The car's worn interior unfolds like an apparition before me. In the clumsy dark, Delia's white hair glints strange and incongruent like the shine of a deer's eyes stuck in the headlights. Sickness rises through my guts, and I try to fight it down, but in this foggy dimness and this bleeding silence, I can't help but see the soulless eyes and tortured smile. Why the pain? Why the wordlessness?
     I grip my head with my hand and crush myself harder against the cold of the window pane. What a pathetic show. What a fucking pathetic farce! When it mattered, I couldn't say anything, and even when nothing mattered at all, I still couldn't say anything. What use is my voice? And again, and again, and again, "Don't you think there'll be the freedom you seek in death?"       
     In death, in death, in death— I seek out Hoplin, and our eyes crash together, and I flinch backwards. IT's face overlaps and merges over the large brown eyes, the sweet nose, the full lips, and nothing is beautiful anymore. How can someone with such a pretty face be so ugly? Cold sweat leaks from beneath my palms.
"You can hate me all you want, but I love you—
      Hoplin's brows shudder, the image breaks, and their rightful face rises solidly from the phantom, stuck haphazardly between amusement and pity. They make no sound but give me a faint nod, out of pity, empathy, I don't know, but I read what they mean: 'I've done my part, it'll be time for you to do yours.'
     I look away. I don't care. I'll do it, but not now. The Pit expands, bubbles and rises just below the flood lines, Does hearing the truth pain you so much? You were the one who demanded to see God weren't you? You have no right to wallow.
     No right? My insides seize up, compressing until I can hardly breathe. God told me to die. They knew how hard I tried, have always tried to keep afloat, and yet, they still told me to die as if I would be able to find any satisfaction or even peace wherever I'd go. Biting my lip, I try to swallow down the sharpening sourness piercing my nose and eyes. What had I expected? Nothing?
     No, I know what I had expected. Perhaps, I've always known the truth, I didn't need this nightmare to make it clear. I had wanted to see something HOLY, something I could DIE for. If they'd been sacred, something absolutely beautiful, something beyond my comprehension, something I'd die to see again, something I'd be willing to sacrifice my being to, I wouldn't have minded. Those sufferings then, I wouldn't have minded going through them. The pain, the humiliation, all the tears and scars, they would've been wiped clean if only the God I met had been DIVINE.
     But that thing. That thing had been anything but divine, had been anything but strong. That nightmare, it had no belief, not in itself or in its creations. It had no pillar, it had seemed so empty, so full of NOTHING, it threatened to disappear with just a blow of the air. It had no possessions, there had been no love, not even hate, and even if it had been in the slightest bit arrogant, I would've loved it better. More than this disgust boiling beneath my skin.
     Is that the true meaning of being holy? Is that the true form of a God? And if this revolt is the boundary between the divine and the mundane, I don't want to rise so far as heaven. To be so detached with everything mortal, I wonder, how did they even manage to make this world?
     My fingers shake for something to hold onto, but even the damp fabric of my trousers doesn't seem to suffice. I close my eyes, but the darkness behind my eyelids is so completely flat, it becomes the optimum canvas for another rendering of that hellish God. I cannot bear it. My eyes flinch open again to the murky white of fog outside. It's just an endless expanse of thin, swirling grey. There's nothing I can anchor on.
     Even Sol had been more sacred than that. I had thought him an angel descended from the heavens. So why can you not convince yourself that that THING had been a fake?
     I shift away from the pins and needles crawling up my leg, and the Pit gives one final huffing laugh. You're such a bore. At least believe in your own lies, otherwise, you'll really die.
No.
     Something twists and fractures, breaks into two then intertwines again, reaching outward for anything more past the buzz in my head. Uncontrollable, it's mechanics are beyond my bodily understanding. Searching, yearning, contact! Sparks of foreign frustration and confusion streams and fuses into me, colours flaring and darkening and exploding in little clumps, impatient to go with a bang.
     Then a sigh and weariness, Cynder, wait for me.
     Sol... hah, I should be the one saying that, I answer with my own weariness, pushing my broken mind into his imaginary hand. All words, all thoughts, all feelings, fade into one ambrosia that seeps through the walls. When I saw you, you had been HOLY, I thought you divine. I thought you an angel, a Luchus, call it what you may. So why? Why is Uhyls so full of nothing? I can't bear to even look at them. I can't bear to even think about it. Nothing makes sense!
     You... An ice cold surprise thrums from him, but in the space of a breath, a deep helplessness encompassed with a gentle, lulling warmth flows through the cracks carved out by the sea of Non-colours. Uhyls, Merlow, An Image of an obsidian figure with eyes as hollow as a nameless skull's leaks into my mind, they're so empty because they gave their everything to their creations. There's nothing left within them, their love, their hate, everything's been given to this world around us. A bitter laugh encroaches my thoughts, Isn't it cruel? They love nothing but us, and now they have no way of showing it.
     I bite down on the inside of my cheek, and pain dribbles through the flesh and blood, Yeah, it's cruel.
     On another note Cynder, Sol's beautiful voice cries out with a fearsome heat, My... rut will be coming soon, and well, even though we're separated, it'll affect you too.
     The mellowness of my softened thoughts whir lazily slow and sluggish, What effects?
     The Bond glows hot pink, but before he can utter another word, a familiar, mind-numbing buzz crackles into life. The transient peace and warmth melts into a freezing nothingness, lacking in everything and absolutely nothing.
     Do the gods feel this loneliness too?
     I choke, tear away from blank visages, address Hoplin again, find them turned away, sweep back towards Leonard, find him feigning sleep, strip back towards Delia... and find her looking at me. Immediately, my vision is painted a night sky of purple. My brows furrow. Her looking at me like that, it almost seems as the barrier between us has broken and flown away in the wind as glittering particles. An illusion, a well concealed falsehood, either way, we're on the same level now. We can treat each other equally... somehow?
     She doesn't smile and yet, she doesn't scowl or show her apparent dislike for me. All tension has leached away, and what's left is a smooth calmness sitting within her features. Those violet orbs do not even ripple. I blink. My eyelids shutter down and up. Perhaps...the God in my heart had looked something like this.
     "We're nearly there." She says, voice light and as different from before as hell is from heaven.
     A corner of my lip tip upwards, and a breath of air shoots out from my lips, "Is that so?"
     Her strong fingers splay out across the mist-kissed window, "Yes."
     Hoplin hunches their shoulders against an imaginary cold, but Leonard doesn't even so much as twitch; perhaps he is genuinely asleep. My tongue sweeps the hard cavern of my mouth. She's come to a half-formed closure, huh? And when I'm gone, I eye her refreshing breath of relaxation, will she be finally happy?
She sweeps her fingers through the silken strands of her hair and sighs spiritedly towards the ceiling of the car as if already, she's free from all burden.
     "Don't do something you might come to regret."
     Her eyes slide across the space, now, in just a single breath, seemingly cavernous, "I won't regret it. Not at all. Not even if you do come back and kill me along with your family." And her lips tip upwards generously.
     I smile faintly too, even though the place within my chest is a tangled knot of sourness. How long has it been since I last said something with that tone in her voice? My fingers twinge and curl inwards. I hate her, I hate this uncaring, heartless woman, and yet, I wish I was as brave as her. I wish I can stand on my own two feet, like her.
     I pin her form with my eyes, burn its motionless flight into my mind until like Leonard's flowing red hair, and Ralphus's stance under the moonlight, and Sol's glittering face in the sun, I'll never forget it again.
     One day, you'll be free too, Cynder.
     Taking a deep breath, I turn back to the window. The fog seems to have grown thicker into a dense, milky white that almost laps against the window like water. I place a finger against the glass and jolt away. What the fuck? I stare at the ghastly whiteness of my fingertip, is it supposed to be as cold as that?
     "What is tha—
     My head turns, but suddenly, we're sliding, and my body crashes to the side, and everything is spinning, and my temple crunches against the windowpane, and everything flashes into black.

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AN: Had a totally fun time researching car crashes, and now I'm scared of being in a car...