Annabelle Liu (9) | STAFF REPORTER
The moment I said the word to betray our gods, my heart splintered into fiery embers, heart scorched with some sensation I had never felt before. I took it as a sign of my impending doom.
I had been so braced for the clutches of death, so ready for the worst ever punishment—
So why am I standing here, all alone?
So why have my people taken my fall?
Why was I the lone survivor?
Their bones crunch under me for every step I take, their screaming voices reverberating through my skull. They shout in anger. They howl in pain. They sob in heartbreak. For this—is a painting unable to be drawn from anything but a massacre.
The shrillness of the cracks ring in my ear, haunting, haunting, haunting. Ricocheting off each other, echoing and echoing and echoing—never to stop, for as long as I am breathing. The bones and the not have intertwined: every step made synonymous, crunches and only crunches ringing through my mind.
Crick, crack, crrrrrr—
What was once my home—the place where I was happiest, has become a graveyard of souls, offed by me and me only. My guilt is so palpable it cuts through my veins, through my airflow, suffocating me, bile rising up from my stomach with every next crunch. It resonates through my skull, echoing in a chamber of sharp aches. My nerves are set aflame, burning with the agony of existence.
The world around me does somersaults, tombstones lurching upwards into the sky, unfettered by the works of gravity. The sky shines—a bottomless ocean, awning, my head threatening to burst and fall in. Truly—I wish it would take me in, drown me out, fizzle my heart into its final wisp: a final beat, a final blessing given to me from the world.
Crick, crack, crrrrrr—
The soles of my feet ache with a million pin needles, red-hot, splintering blisters splitting my skin in half. Only the gods know how long I have walked for—yet to me, it is but an eternity. The temptation to stop pulls ever vigorously at my heartstrings, dragging me along, praying, begging on its knees for me to stop.
But I must continue. For there is no choice but this. It is my final repentance, an apology carved deep from within my soul. For there is only so much I am able to do after crushing all these souls that lay in the dirt, rubbed into the ground as a mere smear with none other than my own foot.
Crick, crack, crrrrrr—
Eventually, the drapes of golden hour embrace my skin, and I desperately await some god-given sign. I pray that it will tell me: “I am okay now—I am forgiven. My sins have been paid off, and I no longer need to be in anguish forevermore.”
And as the kiss of golden hour flushes out to show me darkness,
nothing comes.
The chill of the night wind seeps deep into my bones, an unstoppable infection consuming me from the inside.
It starts at my feet. First, it is nearly relief—the coolness a break from the scathing hot ground that ate away at the base of my feet. But it quickly morphs into this blinding, aching pain. A crust of coldness envelops my skin, so susceptible to aches, now twice as sensitive to the sharp objects of the ground. The inside boils, flames so hot it feels like it begins to bubble, huge bumps bursting from the bottom of my feet. But the contrasting of the temperatures is the worst—increases my senses by tenfold, choked gasps leaving my mouth at every step.
Crick, crack, crrrrrr—
The stars laugh at me as I traverse the grounds with a clenched jaw, lips bitten raw with blood.
And as sunrise approaches on the horizon—I am spent.
All feels like a mere fever dream, the fear that was once blinding fading out into some dull ache in the background. Exhaustion feels ingrained into my pores, aging me by years and years.
Maybe that age—is what causes me to collapse.
I cannot go on anymore, bones so brittle and weak, edges of my mind blurred into a nebulous cloud. Deep within the folds of my mind, a laugh rings out. It is hollow, yet stretching on for eternity, some unregistrable voice. It sounds of the forests and seas and lands and everything in between, everything in existence encapsulated within.
For it must be the gods, whom I once betrayed: laughing now as my body betrays my mind.
My chest balloons as I rise: gorgeous, blue hues surrounding me, wisps of cloud dancing at my fingertips. The sun basks me in a comfortable heat, the winds soothing my wounds. From somewhere far, far above, I watch: as my body collapses into nothingness.
I join the skeletons on the ground.
Yet somewhere above, in some land I cannot perceive, some haze of darkness, I continue treading on red-hot coals, on their bones that burn forevermore. Forever repenting, some slip between life and earth, a grey area of eternity. Where I cannot ever find solace in death, nor find love again as in life.
Crick, crack, crrrrrr—
Perhaps this was the greatest punishment of all.
