Don't be too shocked. I left that memory in this paper. That is one of the many memories I have found and have about them, about the worships, about your beliefs. Atrocious, but you and I have committed them. Those blacked out periods of time. The periods of dizziness after the incense. The inability to explain what exactly happens in mass. It might make a little bit more sense now. They are not someone you can afford to offend.
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The Stairs. That is where they are taking you, well where you are taking yourself. When you walk enough, you'll find it carved into the side of a mountain; the roughly chiseled platforms carved into the age old stone are the Stairs, even if their structures suggest otherwise. If you fall into the abyss, you will not die. To better phrase it, you can not die. You will re-appear at the start, as if you had never entered, but the memory, the pain of being ripped open will haunt you. Your deaths, every single one, will be etched into your bones, marked and never healed. You will be slowly broken, mind and soul, and worse is that your body will never show it. You will continue to die and not have any physical remembrance of it, nothing to track your pain and suffering. You will suffer in silence and you will doubt your deaths, your very existence. Sanity is no more a passing concept than the idea of your supposed finite life.
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You wish for death, but your god has forsaken you. So stab yourself. Remind yourself you can bleed, prove that your existence is far detached from whatever higher deity declares it to be. Your blood proves you are mortal. It proves that you are alive. Struggle and fight alone, die a dog's death alone, and die, die, die, die and die again. Keep dying, but never stop pursuing. When your grip gets weak, when you get tired, remind yourself that you have nothing. Your parents, your friends, your town; they will never accept you back. They won't let you go back.So cling harder to the edge of every platform. Cling until the skin tears off your flesh and till your hands can no longer feel. Yell, scream and curse as you get devoured by the darkness. Bleed until the ground turns red, until the ground overflows with your blood, until a river runs into the mouth of the entrance; the mouth that is greedy for more. Let your body remember your self inflicted pain, because that is something you can understand, something you can see. Never give in. That is what they want.
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They want it. The worst of you. Your intrusive thoughts, your thoughtless anger turned to violence, your despair and fear, your primal barbaric self devoid of humanity. The perfect vessel that can harbor the unspeakable atrocities of mankind. A vessel for their god, for what was once our god.
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But why you, why us? There is no reason. It is senseless violence and torture. We were unlucky, ill-fated. Our paths were torn prematurely leaving us stranded.
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There is no reason. Logic does not exist here.
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It will come to you and offer peace, solitude at the expense of giving up. Do not accept. It will whisper sweet nothings, empty promises and yell at your strength, attempting to snuff out the already dying flame.
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It will take form the deeper you go. The shadows will tangle and twist, tightening and expanding. Veins form, pumping the abyss throughout its body. Iron on iron. Steel on steel. Your hair will go on edge, alert at nothing. You will swear you hear screams. Screams that will resound in your head, blunting whatever thoughts you had left. A bell being rung endlessly. A rope tied around your head being pulled, pulled, pulled. Heavy heaves. It will burst.
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Face it. It is you. You will see that soon enough. Your very same features shown on the shadows, wispy and undefined, but something you can recognize, something that calls for you. It will comfort you, claiming it understands your pain, your trials. That you can give up. Do not. Grab at the shadows, firming your grip on its neck, your neck. Squeeze until your eyes become bloodshot, until your eyes bleed, bleeds the tears of your suffering and sorrow. Watch as your bloodied hands taint the shadows red, as the red chases after the shadows that try to escape. Watch as itsface looks with glee, as your morals degrade, as your humanity disappears. Stab at yourself, stab at it. When your dagger breaks, punch at the shadows. Punch until the ground cracks, until the platform tilts and screams. When your arms can no longer move, kick. When you can no longer kick, gnaw. Enact the senseless violence it wanted. Your blood is your proof of existence. Spread it and gain strength.
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Beat corruption with corruption, for I have seen it with these damned cursed eyes.
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But you can never win. You are not allowed to win. Whether you give in to it or kill it, they will take you. They were always watching and waiting for you. For you to feel the joy of thwarting your captor, before being plunged into suffering you couldn't comprehend. They will make you despair. Strapped to an alter, runes surrounding you, runes on you, they will reduce you into a life form so basic, so primitive you will simply not exist. You will be wiped and sent into nothing. They will rebuild you in the eyes of their god.
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The god's vessel will take form. Your flesh will contort, tangle and twist, tightening and expanding. Veins form, pumping blood throughout your body. Iron on iron. Steel on steel. Your hair will go on edge, alert at something. You will swear you hear screams. Your screams. The screams of laughter, joy, satisfaction. The screams of pain, suffering and comprehension of something that you can't, shouldn't be able to understand. For you have seen what I have seen; the tangibility of the intangible, the order in the chaos, the coexistence of antitheses, something that can't exist but somehow does. Your body can no longer keep up with your mind. For your mind is scarred and marked, but your body is clean. And all your suffering, pain, trials by death leads to failure, leads to nothing.
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I was a failure too. My predecessor before me was a failure and his predecessor was a failure. None of us could hold the vessel for the god. When it tried to descend, we all rejected it. A scrap of humanity left in us is what made us incompatible, made us human. Instead, we were cursed and forced to suffer for the rest of our lives. Our bodies were blown to pieces and our bodies altered. The very things we used to kill it, our only strength, became our weakness, a mark of it and their God and of our inhumanity. Our bodies were dumped and in our blindsided hope, hope that we could be saved, we crawled towards the town, grasping the earth, begging for it to give us life.
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I do not have much time left. I have already seen their marching and chanting for redemption and now I can hear it, now they finally want to silence me for what I have seen. So, I cry. My death isn't the first or the last. My death signals the next. It looks like it is someone else's time. They are looking to repeat this age-old tradition of sacrifice, madness and unnecessary suffering. So, I cry for the generations after me who will have to go alone, pitifully alone down the Stairs. I shed tears that they are unable to shed and I pray; a prayer to some sort of belief in the God, your God, that does not exist to spare you from whatever awaits you down there.
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Redemption. Redemption. The crowd chants. A corpse is burning on the ground. Its body is covered in dirt. Its face barely recognizable, his eyes missing, and an indescribable look torn onto his face. A look of pity, confusion and peace. A look of a man who has been redeemed. A look of a man who has been damned.
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A look of a man who went down the Stairs.
