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“So you don’t resent what they did to you?”
Abyss Monarch takes a deep breath, aware of the eyes around the room. Several former denizens of Sugarteara mill about, each one they remembered festering a deep seated grudge against them. Two are former priests which once towered over their post, another a sculptor who crafted ritualistic idols.
Each used to wear beautiful ceremonial rings, blue spots as glorious as the sun shining down into the water, but those days are no more.
“No, I do not,” they reply, downing another glass of juice. They do not drink alcohol anymore, for the darkness it poured down their throat made them unable to perceive the light.
“…Really?” Electric Eel asks. “I find that hard to believe, personally. If it were me, I would have been furious!”
“Yes, well…”
The bartender serves them water. They wave their hands while Electric Eel smiles, and both are served anyway. Looking over their own shoulder before back again to those dark eyes, purple eyes watch as Abyss Monarch nearly flinch while the sculptor appears to catch their gaze. But, in the end, before she can pull in her hook, she is pulled away by a horde of clownfish Cookies while she has the time to think.
“You were not there. You were not the beautifully decorated scapegoat, who made beauty out of nothing. You were not living with fear that the next time your power grew, that it would cause someone else’s death.”
“…D-Death?”
Electric Eel gulps, drumming their fingers against the glass. Contrary to popular belief, it was actually heavy water, and not, you know, the water that was already around them. Heavy water was a delicacy in Wandercrab, a complimentary gift only given when you had proven yourself to be something greater than the sum of your parts, despite the transience of what was beneath your feet. It was always flavored with a hint of citrusy seaweed and a slice of pickled lime.
“…You actually…like, killed people?”
Their voice lowers in that same candor Abyss Monarch has heard many times before. But with a deep breath, they know it does not carry the same meaning.
“I was ordered to.” Their tone is as dry as a sand dune, nestled against the cheek of a biting wave. One day, they had told themselves long ago—they were going to see what a desert looked like, because it was possible. It was where the sun shined the brightest. It was where the sun shined so brightly it could strip flesh from bone, chlorophyll from chloroplast, scales from the skin.
Though they knew their fate was sealed, a part of them still believed anyway. Just as the sun shines, just as the moon rose.
“…I had no choice. As soon as I began purifying the pearl, I found myself at the whims of the high clergy and their subordinates. I became privy to everyone’s personal business within the city, just as they were, and quickly I developed the skills necessary to reduce each and every body to not just crumbs, but ashes. Ashes, ashes…ashes under the waves. Their bodies reduced to the nothingness that the elite desired, smeared on the waves as if nobody ever knew their names.”
“Hey now, don’t hit me with your typical melodrama—”
They bristle. But Electric Eel laughs, taking a sip of water and pouring their cup into theirs. It wasn’t filled as much.
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding. But you can be so…dark, when you get like this. It doesn’t feel like you.”
“Then you don’t know me.”
“Our lips have touched, do not say that I do not know you.”
Abyss Monarch stops. Electric Eel grins widely, shit-eating smearing across their face as those dark eyes go wide, wide, wide. The mouth beneath those eyes tries to take a sip of water before Electric Eel pipes back up again.
“And I sucked you off too, which you told me you’d never done with anyone before, so don’t give me that e—!”
Water all over the table. Abyss Monarch gags, boiling with an intense blush that blurs in the haze of the spat-out heavy water sinking to the floor. Several other Cookies turn their heads, including the two former priests, but someone flashy quickly storms through the door and shouts something inane and insubstantial. A suitable distraction.
“…You…!”
“Haha, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—!!”
“No, no,” they reply weakly, trying to hold a laugh in their hand while pulling their hood over their face. Their skin burns so hotly that they could this entire floor into a steamed seafood buffet should they have chosen to.
“…I like it when you make me laugh. I never know when to…when to expect it.”
Electric Eel smiles again, chest falling up and down again in steady rhythms as the flashy body from early spins around and starts performing some half-assed whoop and dance choreography. Several others like them show up in bright red fins and gaudy makeup, making waves through the water as others cheer them on.
“…But…to go back to the original topic…once again, no, I don’t. I don’t…resent them.”
“…Honestly, I still don’t believe you.”
Abyss Monarch blinks, but takes a deep breath from their chest again. The high priests staring them down from across the room was drilled so deeply into their head they couldn’t forget the image even if they wanted to, but instead of scrambling to push it away, they ruminate on it. They let it sit against their chest, their head, and their heart, just as they grab Electric Eel’s hand and press it into their own.
The image is fuzzier now. Fuzzier in some places at least—but clearer in others. Clearer in the fine details, the winding of the halls and the ostentatiousness of their clothes. Man, did they really wear those things around all the time? Those oversized sleeves, those asymmetrically stamped metal embosses upon their capes? Those showy frills upon their shoulders, plucked from the finest of their lionfish herds?
“…I’m not lying. I promise.”
“You’re not mad at them?”
“Oh, I am still plenty angry. I hate myself more than I hate them though, so it’s never bothered me.”
“You hate yourself for something someone else did to you? What kind of logic is that?”
Abyss Monarch laughs. It’s a small, cooped laugh, contained delicately within a thin wrapper of hands and paranoid ideations. As well as exasperation, but that just simmers up as more laughter.
“…You’ve got to have lived quite the privileged life if you can say something like that to someone.”
“Wuh—I’m not, huh?”
“You’ve never had by regrets?”
“The only regret I’ve ever had is not finding Wandercrab sooner. What my life was like before this place…eh, it was uneventful.”
“And yet you don’t hold it against your own soul…”
“No, not really. It had a purpose—it led me here. For as mundane and ordinary as it was, it forced me outta my home and into deeper waters. I finally found a place I could be my true self in, a place that lights up just as much as me!”
Electric Eel pounds the table with their free hand, almost letting go of Abyss Monarch until they grab tighter and push to the table.
“…What a cuddlefish you are.”
“I’m also cold. Your hand is the warmest thing in here.”
“Oh, really?”
The bartender returns to them quickly as Electric Eel orders some random drink and slouches back onto the table. Abyss Monarch doesn’t know how they keep their elbows on it for so long—there were so many jagged screws and loose edges poking out of its handiwork.
“…But…I guess you see now what I mean,” they continue.”
“Hm?”
Electric Eels cocks their head at them and Abyss Monarch pulls their arms beneath the table.
“…I don’t resent them because what happened…well, I still don’t know whether it was fate, or blind chance, but for all the misery they thrust upon me, it also led me here. Their scapegoating of me led to greater, and newer ventures. And I cannot say…”
Their hands unclasp, and Electric Eel wants them back. Abyss Monarch rises their own towards the neon lights and dances their lithe index and pointer fingers around like ballet. They swirl and curve each joint to the beat of music they are only halfway listening to, music that will not make any concrete impression but will ultimately still have been a part of the larger snapshot of this memory, of this feeling floating in the warbling time their mind keeps.
“…That I would trade that to have an easier way out of my misery.”
Finally they jerk to Electric Eel, slit pupils slicing so deeply into that exposed chest of theirs that their heart beats like it needs an ambulance. Though barely able to dilate, the black within those minuscule slices of reality are enough to bring the universe to its knees.
“I cannot say I would have traded it away if it meant I did not meet you.”
“Wh…!”
Abyss Monarch closes their eyes for millisecond before quickly kissing them. It’s just a simple peck, but now Electric Eel was the one holding the steamer basket.
“…Ah, r-really? You…You mean it?”
“Yes, I do. Don’t you know that already?”
“It’s…It’s nice to be reminded, honestly. And I love when you look at me like that…”
“Like…like what?”
They snicker into their hand again, amused at their own mind.
“…I like staring into abysses, you know? And I especially like one that stares back at me.”
Abyss Monarch blushes again, the tentacles connected to their cap going completely limp as Electric Eel pats their back and cackles quietly, just for the two of them to hear.
—
“…Oh yeah, there’s something I wanted to ask you earlier. At the bar I mean. But I forgot.”
“Hm?”
Electric Eel hangs up their coat and wraps their long body into a bronze diving helmet still holding onto flecks of its original green paint.
“…Well, it’s two things. The first one is—I thought you couldn’t control your power in Sugarteara? The way you described it to that coffee ray chick had me thinking you didn’t have control of your…uh…”
“Blackouts.”
“Yeah, blackouts,” they reply. Abyss Monarch sets their staff against the wall and curls up against them, laying their hands across their chest and their hair against their scarred shoulder. Electric Eel smells like a burnt lightbulb, smoking after it’s given its true all once and for all against everything, against the odds.
“So…like…yeah, guess I asked the question already. Did those priests or whatever set you up or something…?”
“I suppose you could say that. Where did this come from though, exactly?”
“Uh, well, you said you killed others, yes?”
“Oh, I…”
They yawn, stretching and curling up tighter to them. Their chest is soft, and their hair shines and dims with every exhale and inhale.
“…I think you must have something mixed up. I killed others unintentionally before the high clergy knew what was going on with me. My power would flash before me and…boom, someone was gone.”
“Ah, now I see. Damn, don’t know how I managed to mix those things up…”
“I have a complicated and angsty backstory, don’t worry if you can’t keep track of all of it babe.”
Electric Eel’s eyes shoot open.
“Wha—hey, you’re starting to sound like me!”
Abyss Monarch laughs again, wanting tentacles slithering and growing to swallow the openness and light between them. No longer is a dinky little window peering down into the downtown of Wandercrab, no—it is only inky, beautiful black.
Soft black too…
Electric Eel leans against one and sighs contentedly.
“…What was the other question you wanted to ask me, by the way?” Abyss Monarch asks, Electric Eel closing their eyes once more.
“Ah, it was…something about what happened to them. Like if the Sugarteara Cookies are here, are you…you know, gonna mingle?”
Abyss Monarch sighs this time, their tentacles squirming and kissing their face. Three drag themselves over their cheek while two more settle and sit on their chest.
They could make these as big as they desired. They had always known that since descending into lightlessness, but it was only with them that it felt right.
“…I doubt it. Everyone regarded me as a parasite by the end of my time there, a pest—someone who was cursed such that my asking for anything would result in not just the degradation of my being, but also public humiliation.”
“Fuck—they were really that heartless?”
“In the final days, yes. Their own sins consumed their minds and they could not bequeath themselves to understand my pain. My power was…too much for everyone…”
They pause, clutching Electric Eel close. Their abscondence resulted in an explosively laundered weight of pain—they were leaving everyone behind who had poisoned their head and their body, and yet those souls were the ones who would keep the real score. Those bodies were the ones which would crumble under the weight of their own ineptitude, the ones which would gnash their teeth at a greater fate while being the reason for their own misery.
Those that remained would curse some kind of luck that didn’t exist, some kind of god which didn’t answer their call. They would tear each other’s throats open as the darkness encroached ever closer, lamenting their lot in life and what they had and didn’t have. Blood would splash and rise to the ceiling of the prime temple, carrying with it ghosts of scars that would put any devil and demon to shame. Blame would turn inward, pointed towards a zenith horizon, uncertain and forever out of reach—an endless epidemic of eclipsed excuses, anything to make reality seem like something else entirely.
It was easy to blame one soul. They know that now, having wandered Wandercrab for so long and witnessed firsthand the haunting that such disorder caused. If the wound was not covered quickly, it would leave someone bereft of any stability, or identity, unable to keep themselves and their confidence together. It would swallow them whole as they roamed the world in something to fill that hole, something to pave over those scars.
Such was a pain so obvious that it was a wonder how it could perpetuate itself. How could a group of bodies so continuously, and collectively, tip the scales in their favor while the sacrifice burned? The obvious first half of that answer was that their anger and indignation consumed them, but there was something deeper. Something heavier, something far worse that nearly destroyed them once, realizing that was the ideal, and not merely a dream.
…
…
…
Everyone deserves to be content. Society would not function without someone giving something to someone else, without an exchange of warmth and comforting reciprocation, even in the darkest moments. Any society, any clique, any form of governance not built on nurturing that brutal, but necessary truth…would inevitably cannibalize itself. It would inevitably produce a monster, a darkness that could not be described nor could it placated until all of it crumbled. Until the very last light faded.
A group is more powerful than most expect. If one did not continually check their own soul against the desires of those around them, they would invariably be washed into a sea of cruelty, justified by postulations of harm and gossip over the wellbeing of a beating heart.
Those who do not check against the prevailing notions of the painted slander of the lamb at the altar are no better than the one breaking its neck. Its blood will stain their hands all the same.
…
They need to stop theorizing. Or, they need to stop letting it dig so deeply into their thoughts whenever they think about what happened. Solidifying any kind of understanding felt like a betrayal deep down, a betrayal of another viewpoint and someone’s feelings. Ego was tricky like that, yeah? Everyone had feelings, but what was considered ego was defined by outsiders. It was defined by perceptions, without a full picture, because no one mind could fully comprehend another soul. If that were true, then wouldn’t the world be perfectly just?
Punishments therefore, by the logic of their ideations, was just as nebulous. Social ostracization was indeed a punishment for those who practiced sin, but it was also a tool of those with bigger numbers. Both conflicting realities were true in different viewpoints, and it could not be reconciled except by the one holding the rod to humble themself—nay, humiliate, prostrate themself—towards the one they wronged.
…
Electric Eel is sleeping. They’re snoring gently, holding one of their tentacles.
Abyss Monarch sighs, holding them close as the city lights dim outside. It’s not night, but once a month it feels like it.
…Perhaps this is the sign they needed to know that they were never wrong, even if they fell into sin at the orders of another.
Whatever gods they used to worship—surely they would have such bountiful mercy and compassion towards their true self?
The self that loved Electric Eel.
The self with a darkness so black that only the bowels of Hell could be composed of more nothing.
…
They wonder to themself as they drift into sleep if those at the bar still blame them for what happened.
If only they knew the truth…