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BUT THE NEW GOD IS DEAD and the holy saints that begged for their saviour could only bleed and watch the world decay. I wonder—how could an apple (the oh so forbidden fruit!) taste so rotten and venomous when our tongues greeted the sweet juice that slithered its way inside our throat? You chewed on it, maybe, gnawed the flesh beneath the bitter skin of the apple, only to taste the poison that devoured your cynical mouth. And then (as if satan stopped to watch your disgusting self in awe) you gulped it down (along with the sins that crawled and itched inside your rummaging stomach).
Yagami Light: The god of a new world, and an abomination that even Lucifer himself had feared for in his nightmares. He had always been favourited by the heavens (a child prodigy, no doubt, but a curse disguised as a blessing from the heavens). I had often seen creatures like him, remarkable ones, those that were born with a talent unlike no other (and those that were destined for a miserable death), but unlike their innocent nature—Light was an extremist. He was a (fallen) god.
But perhaps calling him a “god” was a bit of a stretch. After all, a sinner like him will forever be called a sinner. Because once judgement had passed, Light was nothing but a mere soul that lost his sight, and there was nothing to deny when the truth was being unfolded right before your eyes. And just like the apples that the other wretched souls had bitten, them too, were a cunning beast that became addicted to this intoxicating game of a forbidden sin. It was a simple statement. The apple was rotten. And so was Light.
“And you are?”, he asked, three words that rolled off from the tip of his unholy tongue.
The entity—or—thing munched on the apple with her sharp-edged teeth. There was no warmth in those eyes, besides the shadow that loomed over her shaded marble eyes; it held no such emotion. She did not speak, rather, she listened. Listened to whatever dark soul was left weeping in these ghostly hills, listened to whatever insanity had sparked a flame in the crevices of this empty abyss, listened to whatever and anything—just anything that might sound the slightest bit interesting. The entity continued to suck onto the succulents left from the flesh of the apple before devouring the core entirely in one gulp.
“My name is not important”, she spoke.
He blinked, then blinked again, then blinked a couple of more times (in disbelief, but he should have seen this coming) when his starry wide eyes had witnessed the vanishing of her distorted figure. Then, like the flick of the switch, as if an invisible wave had washed over the hairs of his skin, Light felt a sudden presence from behind. The young man held his breath in such a way, he had almost forgotten how to breathe. It was like a strange fever dream (or a nightmare) that looped in his mind around and around and around until the knots had tangled into a sticky, icky mess. But the more he became aware of his senses and his surroundings, he realised that this was in fact, real. Light was not stupid. He was smart enough to decipher what is reality and what is a dream.
“I think you know who I am, after all, you’re a fake god, no?”
Light scoffed, “Fake god. That’s an interesting choice of a nickname.”
“And yet, you don’t deny it.”
Ever so slowly, did the man dare to turn around, but to his surprise, his eyes were greeted by a much more comforting sight to see. She no longer looked like the grotesque beast she was. No more scaly reptilian skin, deformed limbs, bloody eyes or the hunched back that became very much unsettling to the normal human eyes. Instead, she looked very much normal—ethereal in a way. There was an odd feeling about her. That innocent look carved onto her charming face was a strange sight to see when her skeletal boned wings were stitched onto the back of her spine. Light had never witnessed the sight of a creature like her before. He had often seen Shinigamis crawling around the world (it was not shocking to see). But somehow (and somewhere in the back of his mind), it told him that this woman was something else.
“Just what are you?”, he asked once more.
“Again, I am no one important.”
“No one important”, Light repeated, as if he was attempting to familiarise himself with the term of an unimportant person (but it felt too foreign for a god like him).
“Do you like apples?”, she suddenly asked.
“Not particularly.”
“Is that so?”
She brought another apple to her lips, but this time, it was much more crimson than the other. There was a crispy crunch to it when her teeth pierced into the bloody skin and ripped its flesh away from the apple’s body. But the more Light watched her eat, the more his throat began to grow thirsty (and hungry for the taste of sins that infested the apple like maggots worming its way inside the core). It was bothering him. The slightest bit of her was bothering him. Perhaps it was her naive persona that begun to ignite from her curious nature. Or the way she played with him with tricky words that seem to mean a lot more than what was presented on his plate. He wasn’t sure.
But then, as if there was an opening entrance out from this wretched place, Light could taste the juice that could rival the blood of Christ. The woman stuck her tongue in between his teeth—the disgustingly sweet yet the delightfully venomous flavour from the apple tingled his tastebuds in such a way, his mouth began to crave for more. His lips moved on its own, against those virgin lips that seemed to be just as unbothered as Light (because affections did not make sense to the two of them). But the taste of the apple lingered in their mouths. And their tongues could not seem to forget it.
A forbidden fruit was indeed, a befitting meal for a (fallen) god.