Whispers of the Wicked: A World of Blood and Feathers

A world of blood and feathers

It was a familiar figure. 

He knew it– even from just its shadow, yes he knew it. How could he not know it?-- just as surely as he knew his own mind and heart. The true shape of himself. A mirror and a memory and all of his moments, back to his very childhood. 

Oh, how he had always loved crows. 

Everything about them– inside and out. Their tiny heads, perfectly round. Their eyes, flashing even in the darkness. Their beaks and their wings and their smooth bodies, like oil, like the fabric of the night sky with not even a single glittering star to ruin it.

He'd spent years and years of his childhood playing with them. His one place of peace in the middle of all the rest of it. The nightmare. The mess. But there were the crows, and all of it was okay. 

But now, at this moment, at this exact moment, when he had just killed her-- his soulmate, surely, she must have been-- he suddenly was not interested in crows anymore. 

As though he’d never even cared about them at all. 

All he wanted was her, suddenly. More and more and more– just her, and only her. He was missing his puppet. He was missing her, and what was a crow? A bird could never replace her.

Had she ever even been real?

"No, no, no, she wasn't real! She was never real!” he screamed, louder and louder until his throat could not help him. “She was just a dream."-- and wouldn’t that have been nice? He would have lost nothing, then. He wouldn’t have ever had anything to lose in the first place, then.

Yes. That must have been it. She had never been real. And neither had his feelings– all of it, just a delusion.

He had no feelings. No emotions, no attachments. For him, the world was merely a place of nothingness-- a void, an empty space-- where everyone was wild and sinister and only he, only he was sane and true. The most pious, the most scared person in the world. He was the one who had the responsibility to reform this broken and twisted place. 

To make the world a frightening place. To make it more restrictive. He’d heard the stories from different religions– and one, where this was not the first world, but instead the third. How first God had created a world of perfect mercy– where no actions had any consequences, and so depravity consumed everything, with nothing to stop it. How second had come a world of perfect justice, where every sin or failure was met with immediate destruction, and so the whole world had been scoured clean nearly instantly after coming into existence. And then the third world, the balance between the two. The world of choices.

No. That third world had failed. He could see that clearly– he had been seeing that clearly for years and years. All his life. The second world, that had been the right one. Empty and dead, perhaps, because nothing could live up to its standards. But the right world all the same. 

And he… he was going to bring it back.

A world where there'd been no sins and not a single sinner would escape his hands. 

He was the one with this responsibility, he knew. He could love no one. He could care for no one. That was a game for sick, sinister minds. That was a path to be led astray. That was–

The crow came nearer to him and interrupted his thoughts. He picked it up– it offered no resistance. He kissed its tiny head and petted it. The crow's beak caught his attention, for a moment– he looked closely, but again he lost interest. All he could think of was her.

His life, the surroundings, the crow, the bed, the walls, the room, the color, the night, everything was boring and dull. He'd lost interest. All he could think of was her. Her and her and her.

The urge was rising again– satisfaction. He needed satisfaction. He needed something new. He needed a new pattern– all the old patterns were boring. 

The pattern of blood– that was good. He enjoyed seeing the blood. He loved the warm red color.

"Oh my poor baby, my poor crow." 

He took it into his bloody hands - the hands that were losing their natural color in favor of deep red. He pet its head over and over. Its smoothness had melted his heart. 

It was the only peaceful memory of his childhood… but he had never wanted peace. He wanted chaos, agony, and pain– of course not for himself, but for others– for the people who'd sinned.  

But the crow? 

It was not a human, it was not a sinner. It was just a poor bird. 

But suddenly, it reminded him of something more sinister. 

__________________

Author's note: For more episodes:

First, click here.

Second, click here.

Third, click here.