Spoiler
It took her a while. It took her a while to understand the beauty clothed in all colours of pain. It was always dressed in disguise. She sat in awe to the wind that caressed her being, Satan’s vulpine deception, although it had consumed her inner depth. A demon. A soulless digger. A foul insight. But her, a warrior. Her scalding tears swim deep into the flesh of her cheeks. Continuous. She had wronged herself so foolishly, even though knowing; in embracing him, she would virtually destroy every deed, amassed. She was bogged down in an ocean of suffering, hurled by the sly subterfuges of her dwelling. “Come to us!” he’d implore. “We come bearing gifts.” And so, with not an iota of politic discretion, she stood amidst, straggled with the voracious crowd for her ration of happiness.
She scorned the precepts of her Master, who in His corpuses foretold the inimical devastations and woes of worldly attachment. In lieu of His respectable guidance, she ventured out in pursuit of the unattainable. These grasping hirelings distributed tattered bags which presumably bore the essence of joy…
Unknown to her, she was being tormented. She disregarded the forebodings that could halt her poor decisions and was very well convinced that she had the key to the gateway of ultimate purpose. She would carelessly wander along a dell unknown to her sight, until reality piqued her. Relief did not exist here. In fact, the ambiance knew not of this alien nomenclature and neither did she; for she recalled her beloved once questioning if she was happy. And her rejoinder was, “But what is joy?” It was not nestled in the abysses of delusion. It lays in the lap of the Lord of mortal joy and His dearest proofs.
“Lord, I shamefully knock on the doors of Your vicinity, desirous of but a taste of Your clemency from the ever-cascading lakes of endless pleasure and blessings.” She prayed, “Please, don’t evict me…”
{You died in privation – howbeit, not the corporeal kind with functions laying inert amid suppurating flesh. You died a destitute, a wastrel abandoned by bygones of an interminable age. A cycle of desire, capitulation and remorse. You departed in an expanse yonder, as your voice intones in drawling and mewling rhythms – obsequious pleas for help. Your pervious mind bound by whims and amorous hankering became soaked – delicate as a tissue bogged down in viscous and drossy mud.
Your spirit was plundered by masterminds – vulpine serpents touting and exaggerating the racy hues of the embittered apple as you plunged, in all your rapacity, for the esoteric tang, while your palate writhed in narked anticipation.
The juice scalded your tongue, a burning sensation discarding all precocious vistas lodged in your conscience, so you hungered for another drip. The cycle persisted and so did your insatiable desire, until your tongue perished, leaving you tight limbed and dumb. You continued to hunger for the apple to dew your ever-parched tongue, not recognising the apple destroying you, day by day and your soul, diminishing second by second.
You died in privation, confiding in all things mortal. You died deprived and lo, unfortunate is your lot, for your spirit – it decayed before you did. You unwittingly traipsed this path as a soulless soul, a body that lost its essence long before its deadline.}
He presented her with a long, tiresome pathway and told her to hike all the way to the top to make You proud. She climbed and counted each of the thousand steps with every stride she took, just as he had asked. Little did she know, with it had been destined her destruction. She pushed past everyone to make sure he was the first face she saw. Satan. She reached the top with tears of joy rushing down. And just as she spread her arms to embrace him, he turned his face away and told her she had taken too long. Too long to come back to him. Satan. She chased after him, to tell him she had fulfilled her promise to him. To redeem herself, he said she had to swim from one side of the bank to the other, unaided. As if it was his call. As if he had predestined her destiny.
She plunged herself into the water as if she were somehow jumping into his minute mental sphere of approval. She swam, convincing herself that in some twisted way she was doing it for the right reasons, that she would finally fill the empty crevice in her soul that needed to be filled with the substance of his appreciation. Manipulation. She hauled herself off the edge of the river bank with the final breaths she had left within her. She looked up at him, sputtering helplessly but somehow smiling expectantly.
He shook his head and laughed in utter patronisation, telling her that she had chosen a good time and a good place. It was a fluke. “The tides were low and if you had swum at any other time you wouldn’t have survived the journey. You got lucky.” The disbelief hit her like a wave of horror – one that kept crashing over and over again so inevitably – kissing the shorelines of her mind, taking away her sanity; just like beach waves recollecting shells and sand-heaps with every passing blink.
{We are all created with unique shadows that latch onto us. Your silhouette is made for you and only you. But you let me in. Don’t concertedly chase someone else’s shadow, lest you will lose yours and regress to vapidity.
Don’t elude your shadow, lest you will lose your light; because light devoid of darkness is no light at all. But you let me in. Embrace your shadow. Embrace you.}
If she could wrap the world a perfect gift in the name of love, she would. She would wish for it to come from the sun that arose yesterday and not from the darkness of the moon that set today. She’d watch it bathe into the depths of the oceans as it settles in place – despite its imperfections, perfect. And how that same ocean, it beholds so many secrets – she’d complain to it. “There is more than just one way to die, just as there is more than one way to live.” He took her mind to a place so embattled. Again… that even this time, a bullet would feel like mercy.
Days passed by and yet him again, Satan. He wrote to her without shame, asking her to haul his burdens so casually. Her hands have become black with the grime of failure. Her limbs are weak from carrying the load of his apprehension and her mind… her mind was to forever bear the scars of a lifetime of work towards his non-existent affection. Deception.
Her psyche is fed up with constantly having to chivvy him to get up and explore. She wavers between a screeching pain and a foreign smile. She wonders whether her inner gale is noticeable – whether the leaden eyes or drawling tones of her muffled voice became obtrusive. Tired. She gloats and gloats over what could have been hers. If wistful words left unspoken ever made a difference, if that one gesture could have turned her fate upside down, if forcing her ambivalent emotions to subside was ideal… she’d ruminate; paint words and pictures of eloquence upon blank canvases – empty pages unperturbed by the internal unrest she’d borne before. She realised that no form of art could ever merely paint nor illustrate his inner mayhem. After all he was a demon. And she is brawling inside…
{It’s amazing how the mind and the heart are two absolutely different entities. And it’s so intriguing; how the heart disregards the mind. That is why you flourished the seed I watered. Delusion. It’s like when someone has such a great impact on you, you somehow forget yourself. You lose yourself in a puzzle trying to solve them. It’s perceiving the world in a complete different realm – exploring a world from doors you’ve opened for yourself. At the end of the day, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that; a risk. But when you cluster into the darkness of this dimension, “Is the person you’re battling your inner conscious for today, worth the fight tomorrow…?”}
She had an unsettled feeling stir her; to say unrest at most junctures of life would seem incessant, but if this is what it takes her parched lips to savour the piquant waters of His proximity, proffered by His hallow entourage, she prayed, “Then O’ seas of sorrow, drown me.” And if the wailing fires better her from the ravages of this vale of tears into the warm vicinity of her Beloved, she prayed, “Then O’ flames, consume me.” And if the serrated blades of hardship disembarrass her from the impurity of her clotting blood, she prayed, “Then O’ lances, quarter me.”
And if the frayed mantles of bewilderment envelope her smarting eyes from a world so lascivious and sly, she prayed, “Then O’ shrouds engulf me.” And if nothing and no one of this kind paves her unrestrained path to reach her Beloved, she prayed, “Then O’ light, O’ Holy Light, accept me…”
{You thought the rules were set in stone, but here’s the rub – I lied. You thought it’d be like a game of chess, a powerful queen and a weak king, with little to no moves. But that’s not ideally how I envisioned my plan. And you divulged me and trusted His plan. I well-versed you of seven billion differing perspectives and I paved the way, but just like the rest, you cherry-picked a fall – into a pit I had fashioned. I led you. You fell.}
She realised, it’s as if these demons that live within her, they have fingers. They hold her back from sharing those livid stories with anyone else, they bury them deep within her cores until they burn holes in everything she knew. The stories that keep her up at night, the ones that she wishes someone would immediately and fully understand without needing to open her mouth to explain to them. And although opening up would be long term relief, she’s just not ready to go through that momentary risk. And so, the demons, they continue to live within and the thoughts are swallowed. Satan’s work. That fleeting moment of pain where she’s forced to stop denying the reality and relive the truths of her existence… “It’s not worth it,” or so she’d tell herself.
This is outstanding. Are you an Extension student? It is very, very well written. There are a few moments where the wording is not perfect, in terms of flow, but the vocabulary is outstanding for 98% of the story (Example: But that's not ideally how I envisioned my plan... take out "ideally" and place "ideal" before plan.)
I think you've captured a religious essence really well as well. I noticed several really subtle things throughout your response, like the capitalisation of the masculine pronoun and the brackets. I think this is what sets your work separate from other people's stories. You've given a lot of thought to the mechanics of writing.
Have you assessed this against the discovery rubric? Can you go sentence by sentence through the rubric and think of ways to adapt your story?
Also - this is quite long. like, 1700 words long. How do you think you'll reconcile this - or just power through at extreme writing speed?
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Topic: ADV English: Creative Writing (Read 1424 times)