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Distraught are the remnants of a gauzing practice, evermore hailed through the front of least resistance.
Amendments made chronic are sprawled across the Ripper’s fingers that reach towards the abyss under the God’s cloak. They meander gently over what is meant to be his face, weathered pads of his digits fall enticed by the void as they come as close to the corner of an eye, avoiding the plane that makes his sight just as gentle.
Hastur does not retreat from beneath the amount of reverence strung divine. He remains just as still, as if attracted to the touches like moths towards flame, as if stillness fit into a body and render it a corpse for viewing; a statue carved in the likeness of a blightspurned goddess; a galatean mercy on a pallid death. He remains so perfectly still despite knowing Jack could have seized his pulse and tried to end him; as if Jack as a butcher was suddenly so readable in the concept and Hastur alone is enough justification for a reason to kill.
“Jack,” as if a prayer made palpable, Hastur’s voice is a vast thing which is neither loud nor soft—rich and unmistakable, but also pervasive. It is a voice made for mantras, for song, for guidance. For pouring faith like wine, into the cup of a waiting heart. “Jack,” and he speaks again; gentle, coaxing. His hand upon the Ripper’s shoulder, a faith away from truly squeezing the matter below.
Yet what is a prayer but a life sentence?
Imprisoned are the shadows under Jack’s knees to remain on the ground. He fancies thinking of himself as a penitent under so much grace to squash him alive; a theoretical burden to salvage under a pile of shrapnel-laden debris; an allegory made imperfect. He means to stare at the colours that build Hastur’s face under the stardusted light: of the strewn void, stitched up in such delicacy and hunger to showcase him and the remnants of his many eyes; of the scarlet dusk that makes up the irises and a trace of obsidian that remains in each pupil.
What is a prayer but a life sentence as imposed to the gods? And each of Hastur’s eyes flutter shut; the cavity below his ribcage coils for a breath through the void. Normalcy pertains to the way he breathes when there is barely any urgency for him to do so, yet Jack watches as if Hastur suddenly grew a pair of lungs to be torn apart; as if Hastur was suddenly humane in his entirety, completely mortal, and Jack might earn a bloodstain or two should he attempt to grab a sinew below the void-trodden flesh.
Not that Jack would mind otherwise. His own bones would ache for the way the Feaster forsakes all. The pang of emotions sting like a rotten tooth to decarnate amidst madness, to eviscerate him like a sacrilegious toil built massive. Its amendment cries for a reach under faux heartbeats, the only thing that makes Hastur pertain to his believers and him as well.
A paradise lost is overdefined in each step retraced towards those failing heartbeats. The failure in its tenderness scourges, the mark burn and its scabbed scar smoothen one’s heartstrings like sandpaper in a carver’s hands. Beneath the pillaging decay, Hastur scoffs; low is his voice not of fear but of a bystanding admiration losing itself in the middle of a day.
Vacant eyes lie gently on his exposed skin, rendering him as a chapel built forsaken; its wall wasting away from weathering admonishments. As if affection was a prayer sung quietly, discarded apprehension makes its way through bandaged fingers reaching for Jack’s neck; the same which claws would press on his jaw as if prying upon a scabbed wound. Would Jack pull away, leaving his sinews unkissed like a martyr’s blood distances away from a holy nail?
“You are the flesh that maggots adore,” spoken underneath the fingertips is the reply to reverence flaunted. It bleeds away remnants of severance, of erosion made holy, and wish unfulfilled. It rouges upon the surface of Jack’s lips then, prying his mouth open with the same weight to unbreak faith itself; the same to deluge in the likeness of something depraved. Something in which hunger is palpable should one pray hard enough.
“But none of those would have known the amount of carnage that shaped this, Hastur,” and this, and this; of the gentleness godstruck, godswept, godsensical. It is when Jack holds Hastur’s finger between his rows of teeth, his smile akin to a triumphant dog which does not run away from a storm to kiss its face as it declares from beneath the fangs: Hastur.
Interred remains of a forgotten belief make their way to Hastur’s face, reminding him of his place. Misbegotten are the drought that forsakes, the bishops that forgives, and the sacraments that make him himself. Venerated are the flesh that accepts flaws like the very constituents of itself are built from it.
Situated are both of Hastur’s hands on each of Jack’s cheeks to cup them softly. Jack will never have known the sort of mercy greater than his without the same intervention that breaks him; without the same ordinances of litany to romance him under the severe weight of the talons of hatred.
“My God, my universe.”
Forgiven are the lambs that never look back at the knife that threatens them should they yearn upon the weight that breaks them. Remnants of Jack’s unanswered motion fall under the distance closed between a blessing and his temple as if moved by hunger; by fear of oversanctification.
“Release me.”
And the denominations of thirst in itself shall not dictate the amount of decarnation made unadulterated and holy. With their words long gone into the trails of abridged decay, Jack will never know which way to hail an oblivion to sour his veins, each prayer to colour him no less anguished than an ill bird in a gilded cage.