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You could imagine it. The ticking hands of the clock circling around an axis, as if dancing. Each tick indicates another meagre second passing by. The watch functions in perfect order, carrying out its purpose for the rest of its days. Staring at the brass gleam, your gloved hand runs over the surface. Something so beautiful— so priceless being left in your care. You almost feel flattered. If not for the clear drawback presented by each “blessing” left in your care, you could easily see yourself using the watch in your day to day life.
Still. While you found yourself refraining from consulting on opinions over the watch, you weren’t born yesterday. The locket prodded your very thoughts, drawing out emotions you still could not put a name to. And the game..? The game was an insult to your very name.
Alas, it would be rude to turn down a gift. You are already unsavory in the eyes of others. There is little reason to give them more ammunition to be wary of your existence. It is a social deficit to find flaw in something selflessly given. Plus, there is a benefit to entertaining each gift. You find yourself grateful for the objects, even with the disarray they cause in your being. There is reason they’ve been given to you and likely a reason for what effects they have on their recipients. Those effects have given you insight on yourself and have slowly, gradually cracked through the walls of your impervious soul.
With that in mind, you find your finger hovering over the crown. You lack the knowledge to make an informed decision. For once, you’re contemplating doing something without rationale. For once, you’re taking an uncalculated risk. It’s terrifying. Those in charge seem harmless, yes. But both prior “blessings” left you disturbed at best and close to losing your composure at worst. You dislike the pit resonating from your chest and dislike the way your heart seems to race even more.
You’re frozen in uncertainty, a prisoner to your shaking hand. You have been trained to acquire as much information as possible before making any decision. Life, to you, is a game of chess. You cannot win without careful, meticulous deduction and movement. You will die in failure. You will be made an example in your carelessness. That is how you have lived. That is how you were able to thrive.
You understand how aged that mentality has become. “Thriving” is hardly a suiting adjective and you’re aware of that. Living paralyzed by unknowing in the supposed afterlife is ridiculous. It isn’t like you went into your work knowing each and every detail. Just most details. Still— If the seraphim are to be believed, you’re already dead. Even if it is to be assumed your experience will be unpleasant, you’ve gone through worse. As you hypothesized, there is a reason for each object’s given effect.
Before you can pull away, you force your finger against the crown, greeted by a soft ‘click’ and the sight of the hands ticking, making the dial their stage. It isn’t long before you’re ripped from the familiarity of your apartment—
DEVOID OF LIFE–
Silence. The first thing that greets you is silence. Deafening, piercing silence which closes in on you. A vast void awaits you, lonely and endless as it stretches onward. You are the only person here. Abandoned and at the mercy of your own thoughts. A pervading wind brushes over your form, nipping at your features ceaselessly. A chill dances up your spine. For some reason, this makes you feel that same unbearable pit in your chest. With each breath you take, you become acutely aware of the pitting unease. You want to stomp out the feeling, to bury it and never bother with it again. And yet- you can’t. It doesn’t go away. It assaults you from every direction.
It hits you abruptly, seeking to take the wind from your lungs as you come to acknowledge the feeling.
Isolation from man, isolation from the warmth of another person. For your entire life you have been treated as a weapon, as nothing more than a means to an end. You remember being a small child accompanying your mother on her jobs. You followed her path without argument. She loved you, but she was never there. Cold, detached, just as you’ve grown to be. Your father, too, was never particularly noteworthy. You remember being a teenager, the conflicting feelings which filled your head. You never relied on peers. They’d be targeted anyways. You never relied on your parents either. They were supportive, but they were detached. Detached and frigid.
As for you? Cold and unfeeling. A product of your environment. You hold yourself in high regard as a thorough assassin. Outside of that? Nothing. You’re nothing. Each achievement in your life was directly caused by the sabotage of those around you. Countless lives have died to your hands, including individuals you had gotten attached to. Attached? No— definitely not attached. More like… individuals you regarded in an almost personal fashion. You’ve never been “attached”.
Strange. For once, you feel almost remorseful at the fact. You’ve been alone for as long as you can remember, without friends and with two stand-ins for parents. Your only friends were names written out on a contract, individuals snuffed out by your hand. You’ve never had a personal conversation with anyone. As far as you’re aware, you’ve never truly let yourself feel a personal conviction towards anyone either. Humans, and even other species crave community. Warmth in one another, in the people they meet, in the world around them. As a crow, cliques are a natural part of your species. Murders, as they’re called, are things every crow grows up surrounded by. Every crow except you. Even in your species you were an outcast soul. Your mother never taught you the local dialect, leading you to be ostracized by that community.
You don’t care. You’re not supposed to care. You’ve never cared before. You feel the silence of the realm weighing heavily on your soul, squeezing out everything you’ve pushed down. It’s deafening. It exposes you. It exposes parts of your thoughts you didn’t know were there. You don’t remember the last time you’ve allowed your thoughts to run so freely. You don’t even know if it’s of your own accord. The only thing you’re certain of is how overwhelming it is. Completely out of your control, your breathing seems to have quickened.
Even Sakuya would have been a statistic if not for the intrusion of another party. One of the only failures within your career. A failure leading to a profound and complicated set of events in your future. You’re not sure how to feel about that fact. You once disregarded it completely, finding it pointless to dwell on. Over the course of several long years, however, you have found yourself uncomfortable at the thought.
Admittedly, you’ve grown fond of him. Even through such adverse circumstances. He might be the only thing you can consider family. Or anything, really.
Family? Several years prior you had the intent to kill him.
An uncontested truth. You could never take that fact back. Nor could you turn away from the fact that you had lived as nothing but a killer at heart before your terms were bent in favor of Sakuya’s hand. Playing house hardly suited you. Even if you became complacent in time. It felt like a reprieve, like a reward almost. It was discomforting, yes. It was abnormal, unlike anything you’ve ever been trained to do. But in time, you grew almost fond of it. It was a different facet of life. It was a life you were certain you wouldn’t lead.
It was a break from the violence, a change which left an uncomfortable itch in your body that couldn’t be scratched. You feel ill. Even in that peace, even in having accepted your position as a caretaker rather than a monster you felt out of place. Like at a moment’s notice, anything could change. In a moment's notice, you’d be back to your old life. Just like this damned afterlife has started to feel. You’re more than aware of how good you have it. In fact, you’re aware of how absurd things are even now.
After all…
At your core, you are nothing but a killer. A hell should have awaited you, not heaven.
SPIRALING–
Taking a deep breath, you step forward through the dullness, your eyes having adjusted to the darkness in small increments. Howling wind mercilessly assaults your features, your arm shielding your face from the onslaught. Despite this, you’re able to see in front of you, nothingness awaiting you for what feels like hours. You worry you’ll lose your mind in such a place, overwhelmed by the isolating nothingness. Yes, there truly is nothing. Nothing aside from the intrusive feeling that something will appear. Something dangerous, something needing to be taken care of. It’s been a constant, hovering feeling since you stepped into the realm.
Finally, you spot something. You notice unnaturally uniform structures, hostile in appearance as they tower over you, further trapping you in your personal purgatory. Each one appears to have been meticulously laid out, as if conveying a message only for your eyes. How obscene. Worse yet, as you continue forward, you find yourself lost, as if the architect of this land had somehow entirely lost their initial direction.
There is nothing for you in this realm. The only thing that awaits you is loneliness, a feeling you’ve much grown used to the presence of. You soon realize this as you continue wandering. Occasionally, you see flickers of light in the distance. As if they were stars beckoning you forward, leading you on. Deceptively guiding lights. As they twinkle just beyond your grasp, they disappear, then reappear. You are plunged in an impenetrable darkness each time. Your only solace disappears from your eyes, just beyond your reach. It’s as if you’re a damned rat in a maze, twisting and turning every which direction in hopes for anything to reach out.
Hours– no, possibly days go by. You don’t know anymore. Time has zero meaning in a land where nothing stretches far beyond the mind. Walking, running, sprinting, waving your arms around desperately, shouting out. Nothing.
You are all alone.
You have always been alone. You will always be alone. This is the core of your existence. Why now does it terrify you? You hope for something– anything to appear. You don’t care anymore. If something challenges your life here, you’ll have something other than yourself to focus on. The dangers of your life acted as buoys in the turbulent sea of your existence, something reminding you of your fleeting mortality. Is that why you crave more? Is your pitiful existence determined only by the blood on your hands? Possibly. You’ve never understood how to live otherwise.
You don’t know how to exist otherwise. Freedom is beyond you. Violence is your gilded cage. Familiar, yet restrictive. Inside that cage, you have never had to take yourself into consideration. You have never treated yourself as something worth delving into. You’ve never had to think about other people either, nor about the sadness that follows you each time you remember your lack of connections, your fleeting relationships defined by bloodshed. You’ve never been given the right to hold onto someone, seeing connection as a mere means to an end.
Do you even know who you are? Who are you? What hobbies do you have? What aspirations do you have? What do you want in life? Do you have even the slightest clue?
No. You don’t.
With each brutal realization, you can feel bits of your icy-interior chipping away, leaving you uncomfortably exposed. You can’t put a name to the feeling, but you can put words to it. Intense pain fills your being. You’re certain it’s pain, anyways. That's the only word you know for it. Intense shudders rack your form, leaving you at odds with your own legs. You hope you don’t topple over, as easy as it would be at this point. Even in this supposed afterlife you willingly exist alone. Mostly.
God.
You wonder if it's true. You wonder if you're truly a robot. You’ve made yourself out to be one, anyways. Rigid, unfeeling. You don't recall a time where you felt anything profound, anything worth remarking. Maybe you have, you just don't understand it.
When was the last time you lived? When you acknowledged yourself in this sort of manner?
When you gaze into the deep abyss, what is it you see? Is it a soul? Is it something profound? Is it something that will help you understand what you feel?
Is it something that will help you define yourself?
An unfamiliar noise escapes your mouth. Hic. Hic. You’re sure you’ve heard this same noise from Sakuya time and time before. Wait– no. You’re crying. You don’t know when you started crying, but you can’t stop tears from flowing down your cheeks, staining your face and wetting your collar. Your legs give out before you can brace yourself, causing a swift tumble towards the cold ground. A profound sadness unlike anything you’ve ever experienced fills your chest.
Someone, anyone… your thoughts cry out to people who no longer exist, to people you wish would hear your shrill voice. For a moment, lights flicker in the distance then disappear. Even something as warm and inviting as light avoids you. As darkness surrounds you, you find comfort in the wind, in how it brushes against your features. It’s the only thing willing to touch something like you. Stained red. Taking and taking and never giving back to the world. Succumbing to this rejected darkness would fit you perfectly.
Succumbing, remaining, disappearing.
Spiraling, tumbling, falling.
“Please– I don’t want to–” Your voice is quiet, weak, shaky. You hardly recognize it as your own as you curl into yourself. A silent plea leaves your mouth, accompanied by more, louder pleas. You call out into the abyss waiting for comfort.
RESIGNATION–
You’re unaware of how much time passes before you can finally stand again. Of course– you’ve been unaware of the passage of time since you were thrown into this land. You sincerely hope it hasn’t been long. For your own sake. Brushing yourself off, you use the back of your gloved hand to wipe your eyes. A familiar numbness settles on you, leaving you to stare blankly for a while before recollecting yourself.
At your feet, that same brass pocket watch waits. You can imagine it, the hands dancing tirelessly around the axis. You, too, dance tirelessly around the axis of this world with nobody but yourself to accompany your strides. Clutching the frame firmly, your hand shakes, your finger paralyzed in place atop the crown.
Even in the supposed afterlife, you exist in only your own shadow.
Clicking the crown, you find yourself collapsing against your bed. Taking several shaky breaths, you can no longer keep your composure, sobs wracking your being before you can mask your disjointed emotions. A pounding headache resonates through you, reminding you of how long its been since you’ve allowed yourself the freedom to break down like this. Tossing the watch, you hear a satisfying thud as it clinks against the ground.
Perhaps you aren’t robotic after all. Your unrelenting wails prove it. Unfamiliar to your eyes and uncomfortable to have to navigate. Each breath feels dragged out yet abrupt. Each tear stings your eyes. You’re uncertain if that’s a good or a bad thing. Either way, you’re alive.
Maybe tomorrow you’ll figure something out. Tomorrow, you’ll interact with the world differently. You’ll reach out, you’ll try to exist, to communicate. Even if you feel alien amidst the masses who’ve never lived such detached lives. You don’t know what you’ll do. You’ll have to figure it out tomorrow. Today, you find yourself hidden under blankets, waiting for the newfound, overwhelming feelings racking your form to wash away.