There was a murder, a stab to the
heart.
The body fell from the sky, the
loudest crash.
All limbs were torn; the ground
was bloody.
All organs were ruptured; fluids
leaked from every orifice.
All bones were shattered; there
were no cries.
The body had no more life; no
tears were shed.
The body dissolved into dust;
never to be rebirthed again.
Chapter 1: Death
(Angel. City of Sleep)
And here I am, staring at the
scenery. Gazing at the sky. A blaze of gold sweeps across the clouds, as it
disappears behind something in the air, floating maybe a hundred metres above
me. A rock. A floating rock, about twenty-five metres wide, yet large enough to
hide the midday sun.
The soft, inviting blue and the
blinding white light above me is but a façade. Things are not normal; no, not
in this beautiful sunny day.
My friend was murdered.
I did not witness it, but I felt
it. It was too brutal, too violent. I can only react in utter shock. Confusion.
Grey Walker, who must have fallen off that rock thing above us, has left this
world. She left behind not her memories, but her motivation. She had a dream. A
dream to discover the truth. A path to find the purpose of her life, and the
purpose of the world.
A desire… to meet the Gods.
My heart sinks. Yet, my mind
floats along the directionless sea. Something is not right. Who am I? Where am
I? Questions I should not be asking. It is but sheer despair that I lack the
luxury to mourn for her death.
A eulogy to my friend. “Grey
Walker, your dreams will live on.”
Not that I wanted it to be only
seven words long, but there is someone behind me. I turn around. A male figure
a stone’s throw away. Tall, yet never imposing. Shoulder-length white hair,
never unkempt, with faint stripes of black. A bare chest and uncovered arms
full of scars and wounds. Skeletal, maybe malnourished, yet emanating a
harmoniously passive ambience. A hole-infested cotton-white cape and a plain
white loincloth are the only adornments draped over his slightly emaciated
body. He looks at me, and we silently exchange feelings of bewilderment. He
seems befuddled to see me. I seem embarrassed to ask if he has murdered Grey
Walker.
“Did you murder Grey Walker?”
He limps forward. Left
foot. Right foot. Left foot again. He is now within arm’s length. Right foot.
He is now within elbow length. Struggling with each step. Moaning in pain with
each breath he took. I react to the unsettling situation with the most
appropriate question.
“Did you murder Grey Walker?!”
My hands grasp his
shoulders. The tightness of my grip only results in his shoulder bones
creaking. His widely opened eyes scream disbelief. A distasteful action. I let
go. I finally step back.
“Why are you… Who… are
you?”
His voice is
nonthreatening, yet urgently curious, as if he has met me before. His left foot
budges. He is so close to me. The air he exhales seemingly infiltrates my sweat
pores. He steps back; his conscience finally realizing how much of an
uncomfortable situation he has put us through.
“No… we can never… we can never be…”
He screams. He cries.
Intensely. Sobbing and shrieking. Ten minutes. He calms down. He breathes
slowly.
“I am really, really sorry… you may not know me, but I
know you, or, at least, someone who looks
like you.”
“You love that person
or something?”
His eyes swell up to
my question. He tries to hide it by blinking rapidly.
“I tried. I really,
really tried. That person was lost without dreams, and without a purpose in
life... He had no path to take, no one to guide him. He was… Oh my gosh…”
He starts pacing
around the area like a galloping horse, channelling his emotions into the
treaded grass. I thought he was limping just a few minutes ago.
“He was in such a
pitiful state… but he has finally found happiness. He made friends. Many
friends. His friends loved him. And it was all because of that damn book! He… he…”
He stops and looks at
me with the emptiest glare.
“He died.”
“He… died?”
“He was gone. He left
the world so bloodily, so hastily, yet all I had for consolation was that his
suffering has finally ended… or so I thought.”
He rubs his eyes and
face. He inhales deeply and slowly. He exhales quickly. I do the same.
“Enough of that.
Enough of me. Okay, you’re someone else who just so happen to look like him.
Okay, let’s start from scratch.”
He frantically shakes
his head a few times, as if rattling himself free from… whatever trauma he had.
“Ahem. Hello. Nice to
meet you, my brother. My name is Fatherson Spirit. You can call me Fatherson,
or Father. And you?”
His name is Fatherson
Spirit. My name is… What is my name?
“What is my name?”
“Did you seriously
just ask me what your name is, brother?”
I nod in the most
serious manner. His face turns serious.
“You’re serious,
aren’t you? You really don’t know who you are?”
I nod.
“Where were you before
all this, brother?”
I shrug.
“How do you know Grey
Walker, brother?”
I shrug. No, really.
She was my friend, but I cannot recall how I met her. I cannot even recall the memories of her. I only… know of her dreams.
And I have to carry on
her legacy.
“Father, we need to
go.”
“To where, my
brother?”
I point upwards to the
sky. The sun. Walk had a dream. A dream to seek the truth. A dream to sit
beside the Gods and gain their everlasting acceptance. Father blesses me with
an innocent smile.
“Have you no
recollection of this place, brother?”
“None that I know of.”
Father tilts his head
upwards; squarely within the centre of his view lies the floating rock. An
island in the sky. He places his hands on his hips. Deep breaths, yet
motionless. A statue in thought for a whole twenty seconds.
“Angel, my brother,
let us get to the Island, for Walk has indeed fallen from the Island, and the
truth of everything may lie on that very large floating rock.”
“Wait, Father, what
did you call me?”
Father looks at me
weirdly. Then it hits him. He scratches the back of his head.
“Ah, forgive me,
brother. Angel was the name of the being who looked like you; the being who
passed on. Pardon my rudeness; I’m sure you have a name of your own.”
I ponder for two
seconds.
“Yeah, sure, call me
whatever you want, I don’t even know my name anyway. But Father, didn’t you
fall off the Island as well? That makes you the prime suspect.”
I expected a bigger
reaction from Father than him just genuinely eating up my not-so-subtle
accusations, and his not-so-subtle gleam of happiness on his lips, perhaps due
to my acceptance of being called Angel.
“Are you sure you
didn’t murder her? Even… by accident?”
Father, seemingly
indifferent, casually walks past me, heading west.
“Why don’t you find
out yourself, my brother? Of to the Island, we go.”
“Wait, stop, Father!”
Father, who is still
walking, turns his head. His formerly cheerful mask unravels into a face of
gloom, which only serves to exacerbate the impact of his following words.
“She… killed herself.”
Those words sink into
me. It’s hard for me to gauge the truth of his words. Clearly, Father is… different. I mean, he fell from a
hundred metres above and what happened to him? Bruises and sore limbs. And he’s
fine now. He’s strange.
Things are strange.
Walk killed herself? Ridiculous. Yet is it really
all that out-of-place?
It would be great if
Father actually did murder her, so that I can properly move on with
life.
But then, if not for
the excitement of this murder mystery… then what is my purpose?
Indeed, off to the
Island, we go. A strange, strange world ahead of me.
A world… that seems so
far from perfect in any shape, sound, or form.
I catch up to Father,
who is at least twenty steps ahead of me. I expect to see a manifestation of
depression. A wave of absolute sorrow and hatred towards me for bringing up her
death.
“So, how are you
keeping up, brother? Jolly day, today?”
“Father, you’re too
kind and happy, aren’t you? It’s kind of fake. Obnoxiously fake.”
Father chortled. I
sense no malice. I may be wrong. We walk for twenty steps. He stops in his
tracks.
“Angel, my brother, I
assume that you are not privy to the various locations and highlights of this
weird, weird place. As someone who has been here far, far too long, I will be
your tour guide.”
I stare at Father’s
silver-pupiled eyes, dubiously.
“You’re a little too
friendly, aren’t you?”
“Death is meaningless.”
“Huh?”
Father lifts his left
knee twice. Then his right knee twice. He stretches his arms upwards. Twists
his hips twice.
“Do I look dead to
you, brother? I was clearly limping
when you first met me.”
“And your point is?”
“Death works
differently in this world. Death works even more
differently for Walk. I can spend many hours explaining to you the intricacies
of this world, but even now, I am uncertain of many, many things. What I can
tell you with certainty, however, is that we are in the City of Sleep. Please,
brother, please enjoy your tourism of this world!”
I decide to stop
questioning him. So long as he’s bringing me to the Island, I’m good.
Tourism of this world,
huh. I’m not at all thrilled by the prospect of it.
“Ah, the City of
Sleep, a mysterious city built under mysterious circumstances. Spanning five
kilometres in length, and two kilometres in width, it is but a living heaven to
those who live here. We call them the ‘Underwater People’ and the ‘Philosopher
Corals’. They live and work within these cuboid buildings of pure white, never
exceeding twenty-five metres in height. Connecting these boring white cuboids
are pitch-black asphalt roads that may lead to buildings or lead to absolutely
nowhere! Do not be overwhelmed, for the Underwater People and Philosopher
Corals are tame and kind and friendly!”
He continues.
“Look behind you,
Angel my brother, towards the eastern sunrise, and you will see a circular
patch of the greenest grass, around seventy metres wide, and it is also the
place where you have witnessed a murder that none of us want to talk about!
This smack of grass may look uninspiring, but it is situated at the exact
centre of this entire world! Directly above the patch of grass is the floating
island, the ‘Island of I’, which floats a hundred metres aboveground, and it was
where both Walk and I fell from!”
He continues…
“Further east, exactly
three and a half kilometres from the circular patch of grass, you will find a
tall, sad tower. And guess what, it is
also a boring white cuboid! As tall as twenty-five conventionally built floors,
a hundred metres tall, four-hundred metres wide, and contains nothing but
happiness and depression inside! How amazing! We call it the ‘Tower of Angel’,
because of its significance in relation to someone that none of us want to talk
about! Such a depressing topic! Surrounding the Tower is a large circular moat;
a three-hundred metre black substance tightly cuddles the lonely Tower,
restricting entry to only those with wings. How non-discriminating! We call it
the ‘Abyss of Humans’, simply because it sounds ominous! Let’s totally not
visit that place!”
He… continues.
“Now, turn around once
more, towards the western sunset, and you will see a similarly tall… thing, three and a half kilometres away
from the circular patch of grass! The thing is what we call the ‘Cliff of
Wake’, a hundred-metre-tall cliff that the Underwater People and Philosopher
Corals never dared venture close! And by now, Angel, my brother, you may have
noticed that the beautifully bright midday sun does not directly shine on us.
That is because we are right underneath another… thing, that connects the top of the Cliff of Wake to the Island of
I. This thing has a beautiful name,
the ‘Spine of the World’, a ten metre-wide, roughly two-kilometre-long spine
that is supposedly a very important symbol of this world’s stagnation! We need
to sweep the Spine, for it is very dusty! Dust is depressing! Life is sad!
Everyone dies! Yet, sweeping the spine is such a beautiful thing to do in order
for our dreams to be accomplished! To do that we need to-”
“Father, enough. Your
enthusiasm towards this place is honestly ear-grating. Details are fine, but
you’re not exactly a tour guide, and I’m not exactly here for tourism. Let’s just
go to the Island and-”
“Create a broom, yes! The broom can be created
with the book! The damn book! It was
left behind on the Island! We need to get to the Island immediately! We need to
climb the Cliff! Off we go, to fulfil our dreams!”
Father prances ahead.
Before I have time to properly digest this… strangeness, two opposing voices
echo behind me.
“This is the most disturbing situation, People.
Perhaps, intriguing, even. Over here
we have witnessed a being that is definitely the Angel, or has taken upon the
visage of the Angel, or an utter fake. Such an enigma, People.”
“What the fuck, how
the hell is this possible? Corals, explain to us. The Angel died. You murdered the motherfucker with your gassy
little shit! This is the most disappointing situation. Corals, explain
yourself!”
“Calm down, People,
for the Angel has truly died, and was truly murdered by us. Now, I want you
People to remember that there was a Light Curtain from the ground, and this
Angel-like being has emerged from the light. People, I want you to remember
that events are not entirely within our control yet. That is exactly why Grey
Walker’s dream must live on!”
“For fuck’s sake,
Corals, this fake Angel is weaker than the last! Look at him and his skinny-ass
bitch-body, he has no feathery wings, no light, and no strength. Corals, he is
such a weak little bitch!”
“People, you will
tone down your unnecessary expletives. There is no need for violence when it
isn’t necessary. Stick to the plan. Nothing has changed.”
“Fuck. What plan? She
died! Grey Walker fucking died! And
what about that Dreamer motherfucker? He transformed into a pussier pussy-ass
than before! Just look at him right now! We are doomed, People. We are fucked!”
“Patience, People.
Life rewards those who are patient.”
“All the shitholes
that we wanted alive are gone. And the only motherfucker we wanted dead is still guarding the throne. Fuck.”
“Again, how can you be so sure that Walker is
truly dead, People?”
These… things. Ten.
Twenty. More than thirty of them crowding around, walking about, loitering
aimlessly, or running incessantly. They seem to be speaking to each other.
Speaking about me. Speaking about everyone. They seem to know that I am
watching them; they just didn’t seem to care. Father mentioned about the
“Underwater People” and “Philosopher Corals”. It isn’t hard differentiating the
two.
The Underwater People
are the beings with the head of a fish, the eyes of a cat, the lips of a horse,
the flippers of a tortoise, the body of a gorilla, the tentacles of a squid,
the shell of a lobster, and the feathers of a peacock. Truly an amalgamation of
the brightest pearls of life, yet their horse-lips spatter out the worst words
known to humanity. Such disgraceful beings, contrary to their beautiful and
awe-inspiring outward appearance.
The Philosopher Corals
are the beings who are akin to human-sized corals. Hardened exoskeletons
picturing a purplish sky, grey specks of dusty dots upon a tinted backdrop of
yellow, with tens of long red tentacles swaying around like hair on a scalp,
tingling and swinging as if they are individually fighting for their lives, and
a relatively rational-minded mouth
hidden in the midst of the blob of red hair.
“I can hear you, you
know.”
I never would have
expected such a eardrum-shattering response.
“Oh wow, look at him, Corals. Just look at
the motherfucker! Motherfucker said he can hear us! Oh wow, we should have just
whispered to one another! Such a genius
idea! Please, enlighten us more with your oh-so-angelic knowledge, you
miserably ugly bull-cock with stupid-ass clothes!”
“Enough, People. You will end your hostility, now. He can wear whatever he wants,
regardless of whether he’s real or fake. We are better than that.”
Suddenly I realize
that I don’t even know what I am wearing. I look down. An unbuttoned
long-sleeved grey shirt with all of its buttons missing. A pair of grey jeans
littered with tears and holes. A grey pair of loosely fitted woven sneakers. My
shirt is untucked, oversized, down to knee-length. Upon closer inspection,
there is a thumb-sized image of a white sun on the shirt’s left breast pocket,
and a thumb-sized image of a black moon on the shirt’s right breast pocket. I
begin to analyse myself. Grey hair. Shoulder-length. Messy. Dry. I am
unspeakably embarrassed.
A sun and a moon… and
yet the midday sun above me shows no sign of setting anytime soon.
I hear Father calling
me out from behind. I’m sure he’s at least fifty steps ahead. I better get
going.
“Damn, Corals, who the
hell is he?”
“People, you would’ve
known who he is, had you properly understood our purpose in this world, and our
true enemy. His arrival is completely
within our expectations.”
“Yeah, you and your
bullshit expectations. So, what exactly have changed, Corals?”
“Absolutely nothing has changed, People. Walker is
definitely still alive, for she can never die. Remember, Corals, if
Walker dies, this world will die with her.”
---
Event 25. Seven weeks before the story started.
- After a long walk by the beach -
(Fatherson Spirit. Island of I)
It was a splendid seven weeks. I simply could not wish for
more. The fig tree reaches a height of about twenty-five metres; never close to
the sun, yet underneath the cool, peaceful shade, with the morning swallows
chirping and the butterflies chiming in, we become closer together.
Her presence is nothing but pure joy, an accomplishment of
the highest form. A beauty everlasting; a mirror image of myself,
notwithstanding. Her silky-smooth black hair dances to the unheard tune of
nature, as the tranquil breeze fidgets with her impeccably flawless skin.
She is the perfection that my scarred body and injured
heart could never strive for. She is the guardian angel that forges the pathway
to my dreams.
Together, we are one; separated, we are nothing.
But we don’t have much time left. Mother, you saw it too,
didn’t you? There may be a day where… where the sun will set… and…
“I love you… Mother.”
“I love you too, Father… thanks.”
As Spirit of Mother’s gentle, well-proportioned right-hand
caresses my scrawny old face, the weight of my heavy head sinks deeper into her
thighs, as I carelessly trespass the boundary between wake and sleep. Mother is
simply lovely, yet, if you were to force me to say out only one thing
that I love the most about her, I would gladly be mute for the rest of my life!
Whether it is the fiery spirit of her strong black pupils, or the surprising
gentle flame of her knife-ridden lips, or her pressure-worn fingers that are
quaintly soft to touch, or the spiralling shadows of the nightly-black moon and
sun tattoos streaming down her shoulders to her wrists. Whether it is the night
sky emblazoned onto her sleeveless, knee-length cocktail dress, or the tiny moons
harmonizing the most serendipitous melodies by her uncompromisingly fastidious
ears, or the gorgeous half-eclipse of white and black that she so picturesquely
wears on her free-breathing neck…
Mother, it is because of you, that the sun will never
set.
I would love to never sleep again, and to soak in her
grace, to bathe in her elegant allure all day, all night. I would love if life
were that simple. I would love if I could be together with her, even after the
sun sets.
I would love if the Bloody Rain stopped falling.
Not even Mother’s flawless charm nor the serenity of the
fig tree could shield my poor, tear-sodden eyes from the background of bloody
corpses. Falling from the sky. Such ugly, defiled beings of all shapes and
sizes. Naked. Skinless. Some fleshless and boneless. What an abominably
distasteful backdrop to what would be an immaculately romantic moment. Indeed,
I should be thankful, for the Bloody Rain has been, for a lack of better word, less bloody compared to the moment right after we escaped the Tower.
Yet the thousand deluging carcasses still never fail to
obstruct the radiance of the almighty sun. Mother looks at me, concerned.
Because the both of us saw it… the eternal midday sun… will
set soon…
“Father, why are you crying?”
“Mother, oh Mother, I simply do not want this perfect
moment to end. You are my sword and shield, Mother. You are my safeguard; you
are my support. There is no need save this world anymore, for I am with you
today, every day.”
And a long sigh. So… beautiful. So… ominous.
“Father… We don’t have much time left... We gotta go, now,
before the sun… before the sun sets.”
The things are emerging from the Spinal Cord. Some
fish-heads and red-tentacles. Vile. Loathsome. Such vulgar things. How dare they interrupt our unyielding passion
towards one another?! Outrageous! I immediately stand up.
“Mother, do not lift a finger. These pompous show-offs no
longer deserve to witness your godlike strength!”
I materialize a pair of feathery white wings from my back.
Five metres left and right. How dare these
shameless fish-heads and stinking red-tentacles come close to Mother and me?!
Ten. Twenty. Thirty of them sent flying and hurling down the hundred-metre
Island, blown away by the boundless strength of my mammoth-wings. The battle is
over before it started. And now, back to sweet, sweet romance.
“See? What did I tell you, Father? There’s something in the
Spine. More precisely, there’s something underground.”
“We dream the same dreams, don’t we, Mother? The obnoxious
skeleton sitting on a highfalutin throne of gold.”
I see Mother scraping… something. Sharpening. A knife. A
white knife. Made of bones. Oh, how jubilant I am to be so fortunate as to be a
spectator to Mother’s raw strength.
“What? I punched them to death with my fists, without
lifting a finger; exactly like what you said. You’re too hasty, Father. Do you
not observe what happened to them once they die? They get rebirthed. More
accurately, they get transformed.”
“Transforming into platinum-plated medals of honour,
engraved with my humble words of everlasting love towards you, Mother.”
“Yeah sure, Father.
Look, with some effortless sharpening using a random rock, these bones of
theirs… they become the sharpest blades. We no longer need to fear anything,
Father.”
“Oh dear, oh my poor dear Mother, you actually feared
something?”
Mother hands me two medium-length blades, about sixty
centimetres, while she bravely wields a two-metre-long blade in her right hand,
and a shorter thirty-centimetre knife in her left.
“Old Walls… Like an aging structure barricading us from the
truth… The rigid spines of the Underwater People do make great weapons, Father.”
Mother carefully submerges both her long and short blades
into a nearby pool of putrid black liquid, of which I wasn’t privy of until two
seconds ago. The black liquid is bubbling, contaminated by the most original
essence of unrequited depression and melancholic cheerlessness. One glance at
the rancid smoke being emitted from the bursting bubbles and my heart became
profane; my mind desecrated beyond salvation. As I flinch from the unspeakably
doleful sight, Mother has returned both blades to my open hands.
“Don’t need to thank me for taking both blades off your
hands, submerging them into the Lightless Field, and then returning them to
your hands without you batting an eyelid. You’re welcome, my love.”
“I-I’m… sorry. I should’ve been more… well, in the present.
Wait, what did you call that? Lightless Field?”
“The Philosopher Corals’ corpses leave behind these pools.
Look closer, Father. They are not liquid. They are bubbling gases that absorbs
all light. A black hole, you may say. This is the same… phenomenon, as the one
that we observed in the Tower, at that… Beautiful Field.”
“The Beautiful Field in the Tower…”
“Father, I know that you are starting to reminisce about
those good times at the Beautiful Field, but time is running out.”
The Beautiful Field in the Tower, surrounded by… Old Walls;
protected by a moat of… Lightless Field.
Get yourself together, Father. Mother is right. No point
having flashbacks now. Nostalgia will only slow down one’s love for the
present. I walk towards Mother, who is standing by the Spinal Cord. A cave
about ten metres tall. What is supposed to be grey matter is instead a
pitch-black darkness. A Lightless Field. But I have absolute confidence, not in
myself, but in Mother’s Light.
“Mother, do we really need to enter the Spinal Cord? Can’t
we just spend the rest of our lives on this Island? Please…”
Mother sighs.
“You saw that too, Father. That golden beach. That eventual
sunset. I don’t exactly know what that sunset means in the grand scheme of
things, but it is a sign that we need to go, now.”
“What are we going to do, Mother? Sweep the Spine? What will
that achieve?”
“Never try, never know. I think what we could recall was
some yada yada about fulfilling our dreams and all that.”
“You seriously believe in that?”
“I wouldn’t, until we have been through what we have been
through. In retrospect, the act of sweeping a freaking bone to fulfil our
dreams doesn’t sound more ridiculous than talking fish-heads and corals. So
yeah.”
I thoughtlessly surrender myself to circumstance. With the
book in my hand, I march forward into the pitch-black cavity. The Light in
Mother will shine the path to a dream.
A dream… to breach the Old Walls and bring Light to the
Lightless Field…
A dream… to achieve Nirvana.
“You were asking me whether I feared something, right,
Father? You felt it too… on that very same beach…”
“… I fear that by the time we reach the beach, we may be
too late, and the sun may have already bid this world farewell.”
---
- After Angel and
Fatherson Spirit walked through the City of Sleep -
(Angel. Cliff of Wake)
It was a
three-kilometre walk guided by the world’s most enthusiastic tour guide. The
Cliff of Wake looks artificial; a gloomy black painted so diligently onto the
pyramidal structure, with a spiral of unreasonably narrow stairs curling around
the mountainous piece of rock. The base of the Cliff spans at least a kilometre
long, with its height reaching a hundred metres. Father lavishes unwarranted
praises towards its perfectly flattened peak of ten metres in width and length.
An unbelievably large spine connects the Cliff’s peak to the floating island.
The Island of I.
Right past the Cliff,
dyes of gold and purple, with tints of red, blue, and pink, has been
unexplainably spilled onto the bright open sea. Or is that the actual colour of
the sea? They don’t seem to be a product of the sunrays’ refraction on the
water…
If the sea is so
colourful, then why is the land I’m standing on so… dully black and white?
Father rambles on
about the beauty of the contrast between the black Cliff, the white Spine, the
white City, the black Abyss, the white Tower, and the multi-coloured sea. He
calls the sea the ‘Soup of Life’. I am hard-pressed to believe that someone’s
threatening him at gunpoint to advertise the world to me. And he never stops
smiling. He never stops laughing. His sales pitch of “Heavenly Mountains of
Pure Happiness”, “Miraculous Island in the Summer Song’s Paradise”, or “Lovely
Non-hostile Flowery Spine” feels unreal. I entertain him with half-hearted
nods; maybe some ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ sprinkled in.
In hindsight, I really
shouldn’t be entertaining a potential murderer.
We climb the flight of
stairs, each half-metre in width. One slip and I’m a splatter on the ground.
Not that I’m afraid of heights, but there’s an uncomfortable lack of handrails.
The Underwater People. The Philosopher Corals. Father showered them with
fabricated praises and bogus stories about how they are all lovely human beings
who only wanted to love this world. My concerns about falling off the Cliff was
casually dismissed. Pressing on only netted one sentence from him, “Death is
meaningless”, followed by the silent reliving of his trauma of… some death.
Walk’s death? The death of the “Angel”?
Honestly speaking, why
do I even care about Walk? It’s like I was just thrown here, into this surreal
world with black cliffs and white cuboids and some human spine keeping an
island afloat, with a purpose assigned to me, that is to carry on Walk’s legacy.
Everything feels unnatural. There is some version of the story that I am
missing here.
“Death is
meaningless.”
I suddenly realize I
am hanging off the ledge, with four fingers on my right-hand gripping ever so
tightly onto the ruggedly rocky stair. Father grabs my left hand and pulls me
up. I pant. I almost died.
“Death is meaningless,
Angel, my brother. Do not fear anything in this world, for you will never die.”
“Oh my gosh, Father,
please, stop. Why are you so strange? Why is everything so strange? What the hell do you mean by… anything you said? Who are you? Who am I?!
What is this wo-”
“Father, look at me!
Stop walking!”
“Fatherson Spirit!”
Father disappears to
the left, as the stairs make a sharp left turn. The length of each straight
path of stairs shortens with each successive left turn, as the stairs elevate
us higher and higher up the Cliff, until we reach the peak.
At the peak, our
bottoms kiss the hard, flat ground. Panting. Hyperventilating. Evidently, we
are both unsuited for such an intensive regimen. One hundred metres. Four
hundred steps. Father’s voice finally breaks.
“They are everywhere.”
“Huh?”
“They can never climb
the Cliff of Wake, but they are everywhere else.”
“What?”
Father rises from the
ground. He stands facing me. The sun shimmers behind him, creating a silhouette
of unspoken regret and unfulfilled love, as the scars etched onto his entire
torso seemingly smoulders in a brilliantly bloody crimson. He turns around,
walking towards the edge of the Cliff’s flat peak, as his bare left foot steps
onto a white stone bridge. The Spine of the World.
I follow his
footsteps. The Spine is hazardous. A bridge made of bones. Vertebrae. It seems
like we are stepping on the anterior part of the spine. Each vertebra, slightly
cylindrical in shape with small sideway protrusions at the bottom end, is about
ten metres in width and ninety metres in length. Each vertebra ends with a
half-metre gap before the next vertebra. I focus my mind and soul into looking
at the ground in front of me, for fear of stepping on a gap and falling into it.
I really do not want
to fall into the gap. It is not exactly a “gap” per se; it is... something. A
gas of ominous darkness. A liquid of boiling hatred. I cannot avoid the cold,
dark vapour seeping from the gaps. I feel nauseated. I feel sad.
And the worst part.
The dust. The intensely thick layer of grey dust blanketing the entire surface
of every one of the thirty-three vertebra. The dust is thick. About twenty-five
centimetres thick. My sneakers sink into the dust with every step I take,
reaching the lower section of my shin, and every time I lift my foot, a
waterfall of dust is created. Most peculiarly, despite the numerous footsteps
Father and I have made, it doesn’t seem like the amount of dust has lessened to any perceivable degree.
“Angel, my brother,
they are everywhere.”
“What, the dust?”
“The dust is one
thing. We can never avoid the dust, nor could we sweep it off using our hands
and feet. Yet, this is not our concern right now. What I meant was the
Underwater People and Philosopher Corals. You will do well not to get on their
bad side.”
I listen on.
“They are not from
this world, brother. They came from the sky. They came from deep below. They
invaded this world and robbed us of our sovereignty. They only have one
purpose. They seek to poison this world.”
“But they were all
around us in the City. Why didn’t they do anything to us?”
Fatherson’s head hangs
lower off his hunched back.
“The book, brother.
The book. Sigh. When Walk and I fell off the Island, we left the book behind.
That… and other reasons that are more… complicated.”
I don’t know whether
it is the tone of his words, or the implication that Father and Walk were the
only two people on the Island, but it hits me.
“You were the
murderer, aren’t you?”
And an expected
answer.
“It’s… complicated.”
---
Event 26. Seven weeks before the story started.
- After Fatherson Spirit and Spirit of Mother defeated the
Underwater People and Philosopher Corals that have emerged from the Spinal Cord
-
(Spirit of Mother. Spinal Cord)
Look. I’m not like Father. He’s romantic. He’s sappy. He
exaggerates everything and he seeks poetic meanings in life. Don’t get me
wrong. I really do love him with all my heart, and it is precisely because he
is so different from me.
But if you ask me, I like to be straight to the point. I
never exaggerate.
… Okay, maybe sometimes.
The Spinal Cord is dark. But it isn’t just a simple absence
of light; there is some kind of field, or gas, that permeates every single
crevice in between molecules of air. I call it the Lightless Field. A field
beyond the horizons of despair. It’s not poison. No, its effect is much, much
more revolting than mere corrosion. The necrosis of the mind. The annihilation
of the soul. The suicide of the heart.
Two blades. Finely crafted from the Old Walls, which used
to be the spines of the Underwater People. My right wields the spear. My left
wields the dagger. I am the only protector I ever need. Father’s too soft. He’s
been mumbling about the apparent lack of light, the drips from the walls and ceilings,
and how beautiful my Light is. He keeps saying that he will shield me from any
harm, yet I have murdered more than fifty People and Corals since we entered
the Spinal Cord, and all he did was repeating about how brave he was for
blowing those things away with his large, feathery white wings, or how heroic
he was for keeping watch over me for half of our seven weeks on the Island,
while we were taking turns resting.
Yet, nothing I say will ever undermine my love
towards him.
He’s childlike and pretentious, but he’s full of dreams,
and most importantly, he really, really believes in us.
And he is the most important person to me.
“Mother, we have reached the end of the Spinal Cord. The world
of my heart holds your lustrous Light to the most godlike regard. Truly, you
will, in your omnipotent form, present yourself as the salvation of humanity!”
“Father, it’s a dead end. There’s a hole up ahead. Use your
wings or something. It’s a long fall.”
Truly a large hole. I couldn’t even see the end. About four
hundred metres, maybe.
“Why are you so concerned, Mother? Death is meaningless.
All we shall perceive are immeasurable amounts of pain and throat-piercing
screams.”
“Yeah, we survived one death and you think we’re immortals.
You’re too optimistic, Father.”
“I kid, I kid Mother. Why would I ever dream of inflicting
terrible pain onto you? I wouldn’t let even a mosquito get close to you. We may
be immortals, but we seem to lose parts of ourselves every time we die and
rebirth.”
“And we only died once.
You’re hypothesizing based on a single incidence.”
“It’s not wrong to have dreams, Mother.”
Father spreads his wings and lifts me up in his arms.
Sometimes, I wonder how his bony, heavily scarred arms could ever carry me. Oh,
I know now. His arms are shivering. I certainly did not feel this the last time
he ferried me across the City. Oh wait. No. His arms aren’t weak. Wait.
“Mother, you will never leave me, won’t you?”
I look into his eyes. Emptiness. An empty space, with a
lonely heart.
“We just need to sweep the Spine, Father… We do that, and
we can be happy forever…”
“Is life truly that simple and straightforward, though?”
“We will never know for sure until we try, no?”
I’m just trying to be a little more optimistic. Truthfully,
I have long forgotten the true purpose of sweeping the Spine. But we are
somehow made to believe that by sweeping the Spine, our dreams can be
fulfilled.
As Father and I commence our descent down this hole, I
realize something odd. This already imperceptibly large vertical tunnel seems
to be gradually widening.
A pyramid. We are inside the Cliff. Yet, this tunnel felt
longer than the hundred-metre height of the Cliff.
“Mother, we do not seem to be reaching solid ground anytime
soon. How peculiar.”
“How peculiar, indeed. We may be underground, Father.”
A place so huge, so unbelievably huge, so unreasonably empty. I can only describe it as a
large cave, kilometres in length and width. An unobstructed view; dark, but
never suffocating. Tinted with a magical shade of purple. Rocks, and more
rocks. It amazes me that there is a huge place like this right beneath the City
of Sleep. Beneath… this very world.
Is this another side to this world? An underbelly of the
false truth? A region so poetic it would make Father cry tears of joy.
But I’m almost on the brink of sorrowful tears. What the
hell have we been doing for the past twenty-five years? We wasted so much time.
Why didn’t that vision tell us… when exactly will the sun
set?
“Mother, this is…
This is… A change… A change in the banal and unperturbed scenery we have just
experienced for the last twenty-five years! A sign of hope! This is the
unwavering spirit of believing in one’s dreams!”
He flies ahead with me in his arms. Like carrying a baby.
Last time, I was unspeakably offended by the notion that I may seem weak. Yet,
Father is never demeaning. He has the feathery wings to fly us anywhere, and I
have the Light and strength to traverse through the right path.
In the middle of this cave, I notice another white
pyramidal structure. I count. Two-hundred and fifty steps on each side of the
pyramid. There is… something. Someone.
Not moving, fortunately. Father, clearly excited and raging with what he calls
“artistic romance”, descends so quickly that it feels like a freefall. I insist
that we need to fully explore this cave. Dejected, Father resumes his flight.
At the other end of this cave, there is a… structure. A
structure covered in black gas. Lightless Field.
Wait, we just came from the direction of the Cliff, which
is in the western end. We should be in the eastern end now. Is this… the Tower
of Angel? Surrounded by the Abyss of Humans… Wait…
So, the Tower is much taller than we’ve expected. And the
Abyss is… It’s not exactly a moat… It’s like a barrier.
Behind the Abyss… is the Beautiful Field.
Father, seemingly uninterested, nonchalantly carries me
back to the pyramid at the centre of the cave. I sigh. He’s like a child; once
he has his eyes onto something… he will cry about it day and night.
How does one gets so touched by something so “artistic”
that one sheds tears, anyway?
As Father brings us closer to it, it hits me that it is a
pyramid of stairs. Unlike the Cliff, which has stairs spiralling its outer
walls, this pyramid is, in the most
fundamental sense, stairs. Four stairways from the four cardinal directions
converge into the same centre. There is someone at the centre.
That someone is sitting on a golden throne, dead.
---
- After Angel and
Fatherson Spirit climbed the Cliff of Wake and crossed the Spine of the World -
(Angel. Island of I)
We reach the Island of
I. A floating retreat. A grassy resort suspended in paradise. A fig tree
meditates in the middle; twenty-five metres, as tall as the Island’s width. I
expected nothing less than a bloody scene. A carnage that ended with splatters
of bodily fluids. There are some chipped white rocks on the ground, some black
puddles here and there, and a book. The Spine of the World is behind me,
showing off its gaping mouth in the form of what Father called the Spinal Cord;
a perilously dark cave as wide as it is tall, with a ceiling five times my
height. Ever so conveniently, there are foot-wide bony extrusions along the
outer walls of the Spine that serve as stairs for one on the Island to reach
the “bridge”, which is the anterior part of the Spine.
Father lunges past me
and leaps chest-down onto the book; his momentum drags both himself and the
book forward. That must’ve hurt. A lot. Indeed, when Fatherson stands up and
turns around, I could see his ribcages sticking out and his melted lungs
leaking.
Actually, no. They
aren’t his ribcages nor his melted lungs. They are the white rocks, or… bones,
from the ground, mixed with the black liquid. This was a warzone.
Father hurriedly flips
through the book. I am still far too taken aback by the extremely unsettling
sight of a massacre written onto Father’s body to react properly. I try to
distract myself. The book is quite elegant. A black leather cover enwraps the
beauty within, with the pages of the book bound together by the book’s spine. A
literal spine. Sharp ends resembling
the cervical vertebra and coccyx protrude out of the book’s top and bottom
edges. In the middle of the white bone, lies an indentation. A screw hole.
Fatherson frantically
snipes out for some meaning, some seemingly unreasonable reason from the
untitled book’s contents.
“No, no, no, there is
nothing, nothing! This book. This damn book! Useless!”
Nothing will ever
erase the memory of a grown man slithering across the stagnant puddles,
kneeling before me, and grabbing hold of my right ankle. I try to set myself
free, but Father’s outwardly lanky arms belie an unspoken strength that cries
for help.
“My brother, there was
a time when I could read this book… It was just one sentence. One sentence. One sentence and it beheld
the truth. It grasped my destiny in its ubiquitous arms, and it rewrote my fate
to be who I am! Angel! I know that you can read it! Please… tell me what the
book says…”
“Father, could you at
least tell me how does Walk fit into all this?”
The spirit in Father’s
eyes reduces to a blank slate.
“The book of the Gods…
By understanding this book, the purpose of our existences, and the purpose of
the world will be revealed! And it is because of this lack of purpose that
Walk… she… Angel, my brother, you may not be the Angel I have met… but you were
shaped by the Gods to be a better form of the Angel! It must be true! The Gods have sent you to
reveal the contents of the book that you are holding; to know the purpose of
this world and save us all! Do it! Do it brother, and free us from this endless
suffering!”
I relent. Things are
strange enough already. I take the book off Father’s shaky arms, as he bawls at
my feet.
I open the book. There
are a few pages of written words.
But before I even
begin reading, I notice Father staring at me with his mouth wide open. He
blinks twice. His lips quiver. His arms vibrate. He slowly rises from his
kneeling position, trembling, unstable. He falls forward a few times. I hold
onto his shoulders. I look at him in the eyes. A great deluge pours down his
progressively crinkling face.
“Even if… even if we
know of our purpose now… what is the fucking point…
“… Walk… has already
given up.”
---
Event 27. Seven weeks before the story started.
- After Fatherson Spirit and Spirit of Mother trekked
through the Spinal Cord, descended to the “Underground Cave”, and approached
the white pyramid -
(Spirit of Mother. “Underground Cave”)
What do I expect? Father’s now fondling the skeleton on the
throne, sniffing and rubbing every inch of calcium carbonate. Sigh.
“Mother, look! This skeletal being… it feels familiar! Stand
back, for I will dismantle it with my bare hands!”
“Father, please. I mean, it does look out of place.
But don’t be rash, Father. Leave it be. There’s no one here. Let’s focus on
sweeping the Spine.”
“Mother, how are we supposed to sweep the Spine without a
broom?”
“Wasn’t the book supposed to be the broom?”
And Father lets out a satisfied smirk.
“Mother, the skeleton’s spine, it fits the screw hole on
the book’s spine.”
“What?”
“Mother, the broom! The skeleton’s spine, combined with the
book, is the broom! I am telling you, with the broom, we will sweep the
Spine, and we will be happy together!”
And rain starts falling from the ceiling. Raining Corpses.
Bloody Rain. We swiftly dodge the rain. The corpses slam onto the ground so
hard they bounce twice, first double the height of the second, before stopping.
It then slowly melts into a pond of melancholic rainbows, and the Underwater
People and Philosopher Corals soon emerge from the lustrous puddle of death—the
Soup of Life.
“Fucking Bloody
Rain. Why does this shit keeps happening? Even underground?!”
“Mother, do not move an inch.”
Father clenches the handles of both blades tightly within
his grip. He manifests his wings and levitates above ground. Still afloat, he
thrusts himself forward, backward, sideways, yet always right towards the
hearts of the enemy. It’s like he’s putting on a performance with me as the
sole audience, yet it is a show that I wish will never end.
A high-pitched robotic voice invades my right eardrum.
“People, you shall not be overly hasty! Calm down, think
straight, and aim for his heart! Fatherson Spirit is the weaker among the two,
and I reckon that you shall not embarrass us all by losing to him.”
“What the fuck, Corals? We’re doing all this dirty work of
slashing and smashing and stabbing, and all you guys do are just sitting there
bitching about us! Get your ass over here, you cunts!”
“People, you will not be unreasonable, for we are
not helpless in this conflict. Look around, People, for it is now more
Lightless than ever.”
Shit. Lightless Field. I was right. The Corals could purge
the light by regurgitating Lightless Field out of their ugly,
tentacle-blanketed mouths, while the People could transmute their
tortoise-flippers, their squid-tentacles, their peacock-feathers, or whatever
the hell’s on their body into white bones… the Old Walls.
“Father, be careful.”
“Mother, you do not need to be concerned about me, for I
swear by the holiness of all living beings in this world, that I will not let
you suffer from even the tiniest little scratch.”
But I do need to be concerned about him. As Father amplifies
his theatrics, I notice some purplish, reddish, yellowish, greyish things
approaching the throne. I see it. The book. Wrapped in its slimy tentacles.
“Father, they are holding the book! Distract them while I
get the book!”
I charge towards the small group of five Corals. Using only
the long blade in my right hand, two swift strikes bisected all five of them into
a gory mess of black dust. I rush to the centre. I feel it. The book.
In the midst of his love-induced havoc, Father glances at
me and nods approvingly. The spine of the book. The spine of the skeleton. It’s
really that simple, huh?
Time to finally save this world.
“Mother!”
I know, Father. I know. I saw them coming five seconds ago.
Hundreds of People and Corals drive themselves to me at full speed. A swipe
here. A jab there. A sidestep to the right. A roll to the left. Easy. I could
do this blindfolded.
“Mother, your tenacity shows no bounds! Your stalwartness
is more substantial than the fortitude of a thousand exploding suns! Mother!”
Watch me, Father. I will be your sword and shield.
I will be… their sword and shield.
That was why I built that white box.
“Mother!”
See, Father? The blood of hundreds sharpens my blade, and
my body is left untouched, unblemished by those foul beings.
They are attacking the white box.
“Mother!!”
Father, your generosity and care are unparalleled. Father,
witness this victory that will be shared by us both. Within this isolated
underground cave, the dark of the Lightless Field shall tremble before my
Light!
They are attacking the white box.
“Mother! What are you doing?!”
A swipe here. A jab there. A sidestep to the right. A roll
to the left.
They are attacking the white box.
“Mother! What is happening to you?! Why are you not hitting
anything?!”
Focus on the task at hand, Father. You are already dealing
with a swarm of these pests. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. It’s just that… my
attacks keep missing.
“The white box, Father! Protect the white box!”
A swipe here. A jab there. The People sidestep to the left.
The Corals roll to the right.
“Mother… what white box?! There is no white box!”
And the skeleton on the throne, the Lord of Stagnation, seemingly laughs at my current powerlessness.
As the sun no longer shines onto the world of my heart.
There is no white box.
Just my body five metres away from me.
“MOTHER!”
Father I lov
---
- After Angel has read
the book in front of Fatherson Spirit -
(Angel. Island of I)
Father reels back. One
step. Two steps. He thumps bottoms-first onto the grass. A horrified expression
sketched itself onto his soulless face.
His left hand,
shuddering, stretches out and reaches for something. Something on the grass.
Something sharp.
Something that looks like a bone.
“It’s going to be
okay, Angel… Walk may have given up, but it’s going to be okay… it’s going to
be…”
He plunges it deep
into his heart.
“I… can just
rewrite this world… and w-we will all be… h-happy…”
---
Event 28. Seven weeks before the story started.
- After Spirit of Mother died fighting the Underwater
People and Philosopher Corals in the “Underground Cave” -
(Fatherson Spirit. “Underground Cave”)
Unbearable.
Unbelievable.
Why.
I only wanted to be happy.
I only wanted a happy ending with her.
I’m weak.
MOTHER IS DEAD.
No, she’s still alive. Ha! She’s still alive! Alive! Now there are two of her. Two!
They say two is better than one!
Ha. Ha. Haha.
Look at those fucking fish-heads. Bollocks-ridden
tentacles. Fucking bones. Fucking gas. Flying. They are flying!
Ooh! I see her! Two blades. Two Mothers. Mother! Mother!
Mother!
Alive. She is alive. Stronger than ever! Braver than ever!
Mother has been rebirthed! Truly, death is meaningless! Ha. Haha. Immortals. We
are fucking immortals.
Hey, where are you going, People? Corals? Giving up? Go cry
to your mothers. They still love you. Mother’s love is eternal. Ha.
Death is meaningless!
“Walk, they have the damn book! I don’t know how, but I saw
them using the book to open a path to the Beautiful Field! Get to the Tower
from above, Walk, don’t worry about me.”
“You sure you gonna be okay, Mother?”
“Just worry about yourself, Walk. I never lose a fight. You trust me, don’t you? I’ll be guarding the
skeleton on the throne. The Lord of Stagnation. A sordid reminder of a rest we
never should’ve taken.”
Ha. Mother? Mother??
Mother isn’t dead!
“Father, we gotta go. Use your wings and get us out of
here.”
NOOOOO MOTHER
“Fatherson Spirit. I am commanding you to leave me
behind. I will never die. Just go
get the book already.”
Bloody Rain. I see it. Bloody Rain falling on Mother.
Mother is strong. Mother is stronger than me.
This woman. Walk. Grey colour. Mother is also grey. Life is
a grey void.
I’m flying. I’m flying! Why am I flying? Oh, I need to get
the book. Mother asked me to. It is so dark! Do I have the Light? I do. The
woman I am carrying. Walk. Mother called her Walk.
“Dammit. I don’t understand. Why, Gods? Why do you proclaim
to love us, yet you threaten the stability of this world?! Or maybe… maybe
there is something that I have yet to understand…”
Mother survived. Mother could never die. I want to live
with Mother. Why am I with Walk? But Mother is not Mother because she does not
look like Mother. Mother has rebirthed? No, it means that Mother has died. Just
like Angel.
Everyone dies. Everyone rebirths. The endless cycle of
death and rebirth. It’s not the same. It’s not the same. Mother is not the
same. Mother will never be the same. Mother died. Mother died. Mother died.
But death is meaningless. Mother died.
“Father, why are you crying?”
---
- After Fatherson
Spirit stabbed himself in the heart on the Island of I -
(Angel. Island of I)
The bizarrely
high-pitched cry echoing out of Father’s mouth seemingly threatens the
immovability of the sun above us. A scream that gets more feral as fresh red
blood spurts out of his heart. He slumps to the ground, kneeling.
“I’m coming, Mother…
Please… wait for me…”
His body lies dormant,
chest-down. A situation too ludicrous for my eyes to comprehend, as his body melts
into a pond of gold and purple. Bubbling, as if the ground is scalding hot.
I’m all alone now.
What’s with Walk’s death? And what’s with Father’s?
I give up on finding
answers. Nobody’s even alive anymore.
Dammit.
I rest myself on a
nearby stone slab. The book. The book that I’m holding right now, is it cursed?
I swipe through the pages. There’s like, what, a thousand pages? Most of them
are empty.
Maybe if I spend more
time reading it, I might get the ans-
“Hey man, I don’t know
what’s going on, or why you reappeared, but I’ll take it.”
I am no longer holding
the book. My attention is drawn towards the large white… cloth? I look up. An
imposing figure. A black silk. Hair. Flowing down to his waist. White blazer.
Buttoned. Black shirt underneath. Elegant. White slacks. Spotless. White
leather shoes. Glossy. The face is smirking at me. The pair of shades covering
his eyes glitters in broad daylight.
“Heh. Thanks man.
Don’t take it personally, kay?”
And he flies off like
an eagle soaring in the sky, book in hand. He disappears into the horizon
beyond the far east.
But that’s not all
that I see. Another man, shorter in stature, parks himself idly on the ground.
He sits with his left leg stretched out, right leg tucked towards him, and both
hands leaning backwards, supporting him. Short, messily styled white hair that
extrudes in twenty-five different directions. A deadpan face with unemotional
eyes that seemingly wanders around in his own world. A loose-fitted unbuttoned white
denim singlet, and a pair of rugged black denim knee-length shorts, revealing
to broad daylight the white… feathers, down his shin? Arm holes on his sides
that drag themselves far down to his waist, humbly flaunting the black tattoos
of trees lounging on beds of grass, which resembles his very position right
now. Relaxed. Pure. Thoughtless and carefree.
“Let him be, Angel.
This has all been part of our dreams. To be able to keep up with Mother, he
needs an army.”
I am without speech.
Silence. Things are happening beyond my control. It feels like I appeared out
of nowhere, in a time and place that I do not belong.
“No, no, no, Angel,
you are absolutely mistaken. You should just calm down, relax, and enjoy the
breeze. Father may have died, but I am here, which in itself is worthy of a
celebration!”
He rises from his
rest. His vision cruises off in the midst of the incandescent blue sky.
“Free up your mind and
clear your thoughts, Angel. I, who proudly calls myself Dreamer, will
story you about this world.”
---
Event 29. Seven weeks before the story started.
- After Fatherson Spirit and Grey Walker ascended from the
“Underground Cave” and trekked through the Spinal Cord -
(Grey Walker. Island of I)
Took me long enough to get here. How long was it? Five hours?
Oh God. He’s such a crybaby. I can’t rely on him. He’s only
as useful as his wings. We’ll never get the book back at this rate.
This Island is disgusting. What’s with all the bones and
black stuff? Spirit of Mother called them Old Walls and Lightless Field, I
think. I don’t remember too much from my time as Spirit of Mother, though.
“Death is… meaningless…”
Oh God, now he’s talking. I get it man, you’re depressed.
But dammit, I’m trying to think. So, I died, right? No, Spirit of
Mother died. Within the blinding sea of Lightless Field, she was stabbed in
the heart.
And with her death, she was rebirthed as Grey Mother and…
me.
“Mother… Mother…”
“Father, stop it. Mother’s dead. No point crying over spilt
milk. Just move the hell on. She’s Grey Mother now. And I’m Grey Walker.”
“Grey Mother… Grey Walker…”
Yeah, kindly repeat those names over and over again in your
head, Father. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m more preoccupied with…
everything else.
The situation we are in right now. This ain’t right.
Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that everything feels… off.
There can only be one answer. Someone’s toying with us. It
all started when the Bloody Rain first occurred. Thousands of corpses raining
down from the sky above. The immovable sky. A sky where the sun does not rise
nor set.
Wings. I need wings. I need to fly up to the sky. I need to
seek out the source of the Bloody Rain. The heavens, where the Gods reside.
But that’s pointless. When we first came to this place, we
tried flying upwards, only to be pushed back by some otherworldly force.
There’s a resistance to our efforts to discover the truth.
And now there’s even more
resistance, for the only one with wings has been reduced to a living sob-story.
“Father, your love for Spirit of Mother should only
motivate you to move the hell on, get strong, and come out victorious. What
happened to swearing to protect Mother? Don’t tell me you pussied out just
because she died-but-not-really?”
Then again, what does victory truly mean in this world? So,
our goal is to get the book, merge it with the Lord of Stagnation’s spine to
form the broom, then sweep the Spine, then apparently all our dreams will be
magically fulfilled?
That sounds a little too easy, and yet…
“Samsara…”
I look at Father with incomprehensible questions written on
my facial expressions.
“Death is meaningless, for death and rebirth is a cycle…
Never-ending… Suffering will continue… Walk, that is Samsara.”
“And your point is?”
“I can never avenge the dead, Walk… You are the essence of
Spirit of Mother’s suffering… You, and Grey Mother… Release yourself, and
release her, from Samsara…”
“Talking is easy, Father. I can’t get to the Tower without
your wings, and here you are having a mental breakdown. I get it that you’re
sad, but I do not have the sole responsibility of avenging Mother. We do.”
A turbulent downpour overflows, watering the grass and
flowers beneath us. It’s as if the Gods are sympathizing with Father’s pain.
“Samsara, Walk… Life is Samsara, and suffering cannot end… because
we can never escape Samsara…”
“Oh my God, now you’re just being a killjoy. Spirit of
Mother died, and she was rebirthed. Now you have two lovers. You should be
happy, for fuck’s sake!”
Shit, why did I say such cringe-worthy rubbish? I totally
suck at empathizing with others.
“The Gods are the jesters, and we are the toys. That’s
life, deal with it, or find a way to escape and seek the real truth,
dammit.”
Talking is easy. So damn easy. Effortless. But what did I
even mean by that? Father’s useless at this state. Honestly, as much as I am
pissed, I can’t exactly blame him. Who the hell likes living in a strange world
where we don’t know why things happen?
I lean backwards, onto the trunk of the large fig tree in
the middle of the Island. I look at the sky. So beautiful. So miraculous. Yet,
a crooked force pretending to be that of the Gods awaits us, somewhere,
somehow, scrutinizing our every movement and judging us based on the disguises
we wear, and not what lies within our hearts.
I want to believe… I want to believe that the real
Gods are never that cruel.
Someone… someone is trying to make us believe that the Gods
are our enemies.
But I am different. I don’t believe in hearsay.
I believe… in reaching out to them.
Spirit of Mother has blessed Grey Mother with her strength,
and me with her Light. A Light Machine resides where my heart should be,
erecting the path that we walk on, towards a very human journey of discovery,
and to speak to the Gods.
Because I have a conflict in my heart. A conflict… of the purpose
of this world, and my purpose in this world.
There is a way out of this hell. A path to seek realism
from the unreal. Things are not what they seem in this place. There’s a truth
to be uncovered. Yet, there’s only one path that we can walk on.
The path to ascension. The path to meeting the Gods. The real
Gods.
If the act of sweeping the Spine is deemed so important,
then it may be the only way to break the Comfort Zone in the sky; it may be the
only way to reach the real Gods.
And if I am right, then they do not resemble the ugliness
of the Underwater People or Philosopher Corals in any way.
Because they… they want to help this world.
“Murder me, Walk…”
“Huh?”
“When we die, we rebirth… Stronger than ever. Angel died
and was rebirthed into Spirit of Mother and me. And she died and was rebirthed
into Grey Mother and you. And if I die then I will be rebirthed into…”
“But Father, I thought this is exactly what you do not wish
for? What did you call it, Samsara?”
“I speak of it not as a bad thing, Walk… I speak of it as
an unchangeable truth of life… an immovable event of this world… Samsara will
never end, Walk… for we always strive to trade our lives for what we do not
possess… We are full of regrets and what-ifs, Walk… Death and rebirth gives us
a second chance… An evolution… Yet, Walk, I say with confidence that Grey
Mother and you have everything in common with Spirit of Mother, yet the essence
of her, the very identity of her that encompasses my entire life… is missing.
Fragmented. Gone with the wind…”
“Father, take a break. You don’t have to die. It’s not our
fault. It all started with that incident in the Beautiful Field… Those words in
the book, and the words of the figure who looked like us…”
“… the words that
murdered the Angel.”
But is it solely fault of those words? Indeed, it is not,
for it is within the meaning of those words that revealed the true nature of
those corpses from the sky. The spawn of the Gods.
The Bloody Rain. The Underwater People. The Philosopher
Corals. They are all out there to murder us, and it is easy to believe that the
Gods are planning all this.
But I am different. I believe in the real Gods! And I
want to meet them! To meet the real Gods, not whoever is pretending to be them!
I swear, I will find them. And I want to talk
to them. I want to look at them in the eyes. And I…
… I want to understand them.
Because as of now, everything is so… conflicted. Why… do I
feel as if I should not be here?
If I am not needed here, then what is my… purpose?
Should I… be gone from this world?
Father is saying something, but the lone figure standing
far ahead, on top of the Spine of the World, at a certain angle behind Father,
is still staring at me. The being’s wearing a shirt with some lifelike flowers
on it. The being is watching us. Watching me.
Please… stop looking at me… Please!
Father walks up to me, blocking my view.
“I have a dream, Walk… quell the distorted thoughts within
me, within us, and let us all be
whole once again! When we are released from the curse of Samsara, we will never
suffer again… we will achieve… Nirvana.
But I… I am unable to do it by myself… Please, Walk…”
I tilt my head to the side. The flower-shirted being on the
Spine is gone.
“… murder me… and we can all finally achieve our happy
ending…”
---
- Meanwhile –
(“The Sweepers’
Dreams” by Dreamer)
What is stagnation?
A destination
a procrastination
forevermore
a relaxation, and may
all the lords
forsake whoever more,
but our swords
and my futility in
this mutiny
a liability, not a
responsibility
a craving for a dream
that never creeps
an eye that never
sleeps
or a heart that never
weeps
a mother’s poem, a
flower blooms now
yet, aren’t there any
other rooms now
for us to make a long
solitary bow
a rest from the day,
for we did our best
a symbol in the sky,
and the clouds never lie
but will they never
lie, even after we die
and yet the crevices
never cry
even after the hastily
spoken demise
of a heftily woken surprise
that the world will
end whenever
a tomorrow, or a year,
or a century or forever
a greater cause, or
maybe a major loss
forever, forever,
however, we’re together
a lover, a friend
a fervour, godsend
forever, and forever,
and forever
A sign of hope, or
maybe a never
a crater, but a debris
from the sky
a meteor, and from a
tree that could sigh
purposeless, for the
dreams are just gone
or just mourning under
the dirty backyard lawn
the day becomes days,
the week becomes weeks
whoever shall break
through this isolated system
another, and another,
and another
a wisdom, concealing
beyond our freedom
squealing for help, a
bloody deluge
and the seas of
golden-purple, bloodied refuse
a Soup of Life,
stagnation
an Island of I,
levitation
a Spine of the World,
meditation
a death, a rebirth, a
meaningless Samsara
and all our dreams are
now buried in Samsara
Let us sweep the dust
off our skins and spines
for we are the stars
of seams and fauna
let us sit and make
peace with winds and wines
and reach for the stars,
dreams of Nirvana
---
- End of Chapter 1: Reintroduction
***
