WRITING PROMPTS - GRACE

 by Groveclearer

     And the rain is falling

     And I believe my time has come

     It reminds me of the pain I might leave, leave behind

    Wait in the fire, wait in the fire

    Wait in the fire, wait in the fire

    -Jeff Buckley

    ---

     Death is water and fire and sludge, sludge, sludge.  The slugging thud of my hear incessantly beating, pumping and endless burning gout of black ichor into the sea, an oil stain in an endless parking lot.  My head hangs to one side, bobbing in the waves, jugulated, keenly cut cheek-to-cheek, and what was once and still may be my body is danced by the currents further out into the open ocean.  I see this from above and below, consciousness bifurcated; what was once a constant stream of cause-sensation-outcome-cause is now dashed into rivulets of awareness upon what by all rights is my corpse.  Yet still I see and still I feel.  Still I am Murnaukharösh.

    I wish I were dead.

    My awareness is pulled apart.  I see my body in panorama, above and below, the man suspended, and my vision pulls back quick, hight into the clouds and low into the drink.  Camera dolly out.  Fade to white.

    Something snaps.

 

    I become darkness.

 

     - - -

 

     I am a flame; a constituent lick of plasma blazing red amidst countless others. I burn and burn and burn. Elemental, I exist to spite the void. Insensate, I only know hunger in its purest form. Burn, consume, eat, eat, purify, eat.

 

     Countless time passes, for what counts as time here, wherever here is, and ever onward I burn, mingling with but never diffusing; consuming, rather, the weaker strains into my being, growing slowly.

 

     I flare up.

     I am the great flame.

 

     I touch the margins of my world, my void, licking the invisible, tasteless constraints. I am being held. Contained.

 

     I wait in this bubble, this locket, this pocket of space as large or as small as anything.

 

     I burn, I burn, I burn.

     I burn, I burn, I burn.

     I burn, I burn, I burn.

 

     - - -

 

     Oriana is here.

 

     She is blue and blonde and beautiful. I race towards her, hungry, hungry. I embrace her. She starts weeping, screaming as I pull her into me. I lap and taste what I can of her. Fur, hair, lips, teeth, claws, eyes. I'll take all of her if I can. I won't be mistaken again. I won't settle for second best. I'll take her as I should have by right. She's mine. Mine, mine, mine to burn, mine to consume, mine to embrace.

 

     She weeps, she crawls. I cover her, pulling her back, hooking into her as she tries to lead me on a chase. Tries to leave me, rebuff me. But there is no Horatio, no kind-eyed farm boy with smooth words and simple goals, no House DeLaVega, no backchat or leering siblings or Ghirle or politesse or words or secrets or regrets; no world and no rules. There's just you and I and I've been so hungry for you for so long.

 

     Just let this happen, Ori.

 

     She glows red where I rake her, where my flame enters her, where we are one. Please just hold still and let this happen. I need you. I need you. I need you. I hold her down and burn into her. Through the fur. Through the flesh. Through the bone. Through the marrow. Down into her own secret flame.

 

    I'm inside her now. She's inside me. We are one. We burn one another, mingle and smoke inside her flesh.

 

    She tastes filthy.

    As do I.

 

    Regret, revulsion, anger.

    Disgust. Fear. Isolation.

    These are all I taste.

 

    Fool that I am, living hunger that I am, goblin that I am and always have been.

 

    My great flame escapes her, sputters outwards in revulsion of the

 

    The sin

    The sin

    The Sin

 

    I am in Hell now, I realize.

    Or I am Hell.

    Hell is other people, after all.

 

    My great flame parts from her body, which lays alone now in the blackness, glowing red and blue and blonde.

 

    A part of me remains trapped inside her, mingled with her own fire, a distasteful lick of everything wrong. It flares up, seeking escape. It broils her from inside. She weeps, curled up on the ground.

 

    I pull back further, revulsed. What of me that was inside her quells, subsumed by her own flame, her own sin, her own soul.

 

    Please take her away.

 

    I can't bear to hear her weep.

    I can't bear to hear her weep.

    I can't bear to hear her weep.

 

    I cannot comfort her as I am only a flame. I can only consume. Only burn. Only harm.

 

    I diminish.

 

    - - -

 

     I am small once more, weeping on my father's knee. His rough hand smooths down my ears.

 

    "Got that out of your system, did you? Was it all you dreamed of lo these many years?"

 

    My scruff is pulled.

 

    "Lust is a vice, o wicked little one, that infests beings of all make."

 

    He pulls me up to his eyes. Red within red.

 

    "You have been most useful, my flawed little child. I am pleased."

 

    He flings me forth. I fly into the void. Flame and dark. Wetness and sludge.

 

    "You are not beyond salvation," Father says somewhere in the void and it resounds clearly in my mind.

 

     - - -

 

    I was quite dead when first I arrived upon the shore of the Isle of Devitt....