Page 21

Visha

The walls are a hue of burgundy and black as they stretch out into the unknown.

I scan the room to find Aoi but he’s nowhere to be seen. My voice echoes into the infinite halls of the Keytons’ suburban house and dread fills me up. Distorted sounds vibrate as I tiptoe deeper into the darkness. Muffled voices whisper something to me, but I can’t make out their meanings.

I want to go home.

Having had enough, I spin around and head towards the front door, but it flees when I approach it. A thick fog settles down in the hallway and the loud thumping of footsteps reverberates, shooting shivers down my spine and making my hair stand.

I know these steps. Without a second thought, I bolt in the opposite direction, searching for an exit. The longer I run, the more I think I’m lost. The Keytons’ house isn’t supposed to be this large. There shouldn’t be as many paths and hallways.

Where the hell am I?

I slump against the corner of a burgundy wall and bring my knees to my chest. Minutes, maybe hours pass without a shift in the space. Strange and vicious sounds echo in the distance, but they seem too far for me to care. I hear the meowing of a cat and the maniacal laughter of a child.

Robert Keyton and his cat Sissy.

I remember that poor kitten and the way he dismembered it. It’s a memory stuck in my head like countless others. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is a dream. Well, technically another nightmare.

I don’t have to be scared. It’s not real. I’m sleeping peacefully with Aoi. I’m not actually in this wretched hell hole. As long as I wake up, I’ll be able to see Aoi again. We’ll have breakfast and watch TV and-

“There you are you little shit.”

Terror freezes my limbs. I can’t open my eyes, can’t move. I hear his breathing and the room chills.

Brad Keyton. The object of my deepest and cruelest fears.

A thick and calloused hand yanks my ankle, ripping me from my corner of safety. “You can run but you can’t hide.”

His voice is a distorted mixture of bestial growls and humanoid snickers. “I’ve missed you, you know?”

“No. Please no-”

Hell .

This is hell all over again. I have to run. I have to escape but I can’t move. My breath gets caught in my throat and my heart hammers in my ears, threatening to burst out of my chest. Terrified, I can only sob and beg him to stop.

Why won’t he stop? Why won’t he let me go?

“Stop crying. You know you like it,” he screeches like a dying hyena.

No, no, no, no. Please, stop. Please, please, please.

Damnation unleashes upon me, tearing me apart and stuffing me with misery. I scream and trash against the devil, in vain.

God can’t save me.

God won’t save me.

I can’t even count how many times during that entire year I prayed for someone to barge into that house and haul me out of that infected hole. No one listened and answered my prayers. No one came and the agony resumed, day after day without ever ending.

If there’s a god, then he’ll have to seek forgiveness from me. He’ll have to beg every child that like me hears the symphony of evil curse through their veins when they drift to sleep.

My soul is tainted, spoiled, rotten from the hands of evil incarnate. This may now only be a nightmare, but it was once reality. Here I could soil my hands and grant myself the justice that the false God won’t.

“Look at me, you maggot,” he croaks, grinning ear to ear.

His roots plunge into my soil, infecting the ground with his poison. Pain shrieks from my being. I’m tarnished, sullied, marked by the hand of Man.

Man’s sin. Man’s life.

His tragedies become my punishment. His joy becomes my salvation. But from my hands, the hands of a sullen child deprived of light and oxygen for too long comes avengement. Even if justice is only given to me in a dream, even if I have to cower in fear of his claws latching onto my flesh. Here, I can serve retribution. Here, I am powerful. This is my mind, my power, my choice.

And I choose to fight back. I choose to find the gate to the light. I have the power to get home to Aoi. I am more than my fears, more than my pain. He didn’t break me because I can’t be broken.

I’m going home.

“Get. Off.”

“You think you can get rid of me that easily? If you could have it already would’ve happened. No one is coming to save you. You’re trapped with me for eternity, and you will learn to love it.”

“Never!” I shout. “You will never torment me again! This ends here.”

A blinding light shines brighter than a thousand suns and his screams reverberate against the walls as though his flesh is burning until all that’s left are ashes. I gape at the drifting particles of what was the body of the monster plaguing my life and sigh.

It’s over. Never again will he touch me. My body belongs to me and only me. I’m back to being a cloud floating out of reach, but my sun is waiting for me.

His spread arms are merely a decision away. Therefore, I consciously wrap my fingers around the thread that binds me to him and let it lead me back to where my soul belongs.

Back to him .

My universe, my God, my Aoi.