For Some Context: This takes place in the same universe as another short story called the Melancholic Canvas. Synthesia is sort of the puppeteer of all the chaos. Also even though I call Synthesis a she at the end because it takes on a woman's body temporarily in the human realm, it's still an it.
They call it a disease, an entity with parasitic tendencies that seeps deep into the quintessence of your personality, filling every capillary of your destitute heart. It all begins with a longing, wanting to be satiated in the moments of deepest tragedy, deepest regrets and remorse. When one is searching it's so easy to infest their minds, it's so easy to become part of them, something that will never leave.
I've done my thorough research up to this point being absolutely enthralled by this entity, maybe even infatuated with it. It's name is Synthesia, I've heard that it's a beautiful entity without a face and now it is my job to maintain our family's quota and bring its hell upon our world. To shake the very foundations of our earth, that is something I've dreaded and eagerly sought to avoid for the entirety of my life. Yet now as I am faced with the red chalk and life and dead within my hand I find that I am overwhelmed with joy. I'm not even sure if this joy belongs to me.
The plain wooden floor, I drag the chalk against it, it becomes ingrained within it's patterns and divets it becomes part of it. Am I ready to not be me anymore? Am I ready to no longer be my own being? Am I ready to lose my independence, to lose my ability to think as an individual? As I think it over once more I am deeply horrified, horrified of myself for ever thinking that this was something I wanted. I am now reluctant, I don't want this. "I don't want this!" I cry, I get up to leave but there is some sort of force which glues me to this. I've already lost my autonomy.
"It doesn't matter what you want." They latch onto my hand and drag it across the wood, the dust from the chalk residing within my fingerprints. It's so painful as the butterflies writhing my stomach begin to take flight. "This is what we must do to survive." Survival? How can you call this survival if I will die as a sacrifice, that my body will be offered as a soulless husk for it to occupy?
Suddenly the butterflies are put to rest, and everything fades, the pale attic of figures covered in dusty sheets begins to take on a sallow tone. I encounter a yellow butterfly before me, I have seen these only once before in a book which tells of legendary creatures that existed on the surface before it was flooded out. Before Synthesia was able to choke the life out of humanity.
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When I awoke a girl with the complexion of a heavenly host sat before me, ever so tame with the radiance of the sun in her countenance. Yet something was deeply wrong, deeply unsettling about her figure. For where one would assume a face to be it was an empty void no darkness no light simply nothing but traces of pure loathing and resentment. She fumbled about her fingers silently her feathered wings covering the span of the entire attic.
"Are you Synthesia?" I asked, surely I had not expected it to take the form of a young lady with such a proper countenance as such.
"I am they. You called me?" The voice did not come from the tangible being before me rather it was the ambiance which infected the entire atmosphere. It felt as though couldn't escape from this entity even if I tried.
"Where did everyone else....." I slowly trailed off as I took a moment to embrace the rest of the sallow world around me, dimmed with a path of red. "Did you?" The hand of another woman lay before me yet I could not recall who she was, within moments everything I knew about her abruptly disappeared.
"Yes."
"What do we do now?" What do I do now? I supposed that the ritual has been completed and human blood has been spilt but no one has entirely explained what my duty is beyond this point. I just needed to accept that whatever Synthesia had intended for me would be my fate.
"You sit and wait here patiently with me until I am finished. This part of you no longer exists on the same plane as your body is currently. Now worries though, I will live in your stead.This will be our heaven now" Perhaps the thought of spending an unprecedented amount of time separate from the struggles of life didn't sound like a punishment maybe it was heaven. She embraced me, her feathers engulfing everything, I could spend an eternity sleeping here.
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There stood a woman on the entrance to the pavilion fumbling through locks of angelic hair that almost resembled the wings of doves. Her face was reminiscent of that of a doll's mask that was hastily sculpted out of clay and fine details were powdered on. Her small frame was buried in a mess of frills and bows forming a dress that went far below her knees which concealed a knife. She thoroughly enticed anyone who happened to pass her by as she was looking out upon the cliff pondering how fast someone would die if they plummeted into the valley below.
Finally a part of the world she could wreak havoc upon every living thing that inhabited the world. She could not only dominate it but bring it to ruin. If the man had known what terror he released upon the world would he have found a way to intervene? Deep within the crevices of his mind he was fully aware and still fully sentient. Yet in the end the force that overpowered him was irresistible and now there is no strength left for him to resist anything. For now he stands by her side, his body now simply a husk for possession and as he peers into his reflection there is only a dark abyss.
"Now won't you go fetch some fresh souls for me? I'm absolutely starving." There was no will left within him, what else could he say.
The End
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