Work Text:
When does something become dead? When is it time to grieve, to lay your head upon you knees and wail? Pray in pain, because it is the only thing you can do. Because talking to god feels as real as laughing about a joke they never even made. When its flesh is falling from the bones? When all the fungi have expropriated the body from the soul?
Truth is, and he would never admit to this, he never felt adequate to face these questions. Humans are social beings and only survive through community. It's a simple matter of evolution, of science. There are few things he knows about himself for sure; that he is a scientist and a survivalist. So in the name of evolutionary survival, he clings onto things and people in every possible way he knows how to.
He was the child, squashing the beaten up plushy doll (that already lost a limb and whose button-eye was hanging on its last thread). The one petting the dog, even tough its flesh was already rotten and smelling of burnt meat. The small infant orphan still waiting for his parents to return. And if their bodies were charred pitch black and unresponsive, it would have been enough.
He is surrounded by people he knows intimately, with whom he shared one struggle and one fate. He could describe, how their arms felt tight when they last hugged him, like stones crushing down on him. Or the frown of concern shadowing their face, when on the rare occasions, he managed to confide his fears in them. He could write prose detailing the barely seen smile they wore, when the sun was gracing them and it had been days since the last rain fell stinging on their face.
Now however, his throat wrapped coarse around their names and there was nothing in return. Because the people he once knew and loved, no longer stood by his side. No matter how much he traveled, how much he longed for it, they did not recognize him back.
He did a lot of thinking, about what it meant to be alive. And the excruciating conclusion he had come to face was; that memories make people. Soul at its core can be condensed into memories, into all the experiences one had and all the emotion one had felt. This of course meant, that the person standing next to him, riding this ravenous dragon beside him, was a husk. A reminder of all that he once loved.
When do you realize that all you've ever done was grieve? That mourning was like the bitter-black milk you end up drinking every day? Whose taste never quite leaves you, yet you come back desperate and thirsty for more, because sometimes it feels like the only sustenance you will ever get? When do you realize, that there is only so much drowning you can do, before death starts taking over?
Nowadays, it had become a game for him, to see how long it will take for the blood to dry up on their spines. How long, until their bones are brittle? Death strips them of all the ailments that tag along with the flesh and only skeletons remain. In that regard, every soil he had traversed was a graveyard encroaching on him. With a dozen skeletons walking right alongside him.
At some point, he came to acknowledge, how his home was completely gone. Not even skeleton dust or bitter-black ashes remaining. The corruption came and it took with no regard. No mercy. Whatever may have been the spine of the kingdom of the Null or the Realm, had been replaced by pillars of Corruption towering over the landscape. Had been hollowed out by piercing violet-violent roots reaching deep into the core of his home. Had been unrecognizably overgrown by crystal flower petals, sharp enough to cut through his heart. Had been taken over by this parasite, that no longer needed its host.
He is staring across the land, upon the towers of a castle he doesn't know and his heart was splitting into two still beating halves. Purple thick lichen cutting through the stone. He is not yet familiar with this world, but this scene in front of him was like the kiss of a past lover. Like the warmth irrupting from an insomniac volcano. He only arrived today, the sun was setting in a golden haze and his tears were like pitch dropping onto his blueish cheeks.
Sometimes he considers, that maybe he was a skeleton as well. Maybe he took this virus or parasite with him. So far, every world he encountered was doomed in some way, shape or form and it would be foolish to ignore the only common denominator. It was a chilling feeling, because there was nothing he hadn't done already to rid him of this curse. There is only so much Cure you can swallow, before you start drowning.
Maybe death was the shadow he casts. The eyes staring back at him from the mirror. The short breath he inhales, when the first rain drops down on his shoulders, heavy-handed like cement. The lily of the valley, that was charcoal-charred in the morning.
Sometimes he wonders if perpetual grief stuck to him like sweat on a hot, salt-sticky summer day? Like the dirt clinging onto your skin, after an afternoon of gardening. He is afraid this means, he is growing them. The skeletons crowding his closet; the pile of bones beneath his pillow. He fears he made one of too many skeletons his plushy to cling onto for the night, and there should have been a point where he had outgrown them. Still, he likes this personal graveyard. He tends to it everyday. Waters the soil with his own blood.
And when he is cowering in the puddle surrounding him, metallic red webbed across his praying fingers, he is selfish enough to stare into the sky and ask; when is it enough? When was it time to put all the bones to rest? To taste the last drop of bitter-black milk on his tongue? To smudge the pitch-blue tears from his face?
There is never an answer, but he is petrified of the day he gets his sentence.