Fan Fiction ❯ Glorious Paradise ❯ Glorious Paradise ( One-Shot )

It starts that every ray of sunlight is like a drop of gold and is coveted, sought after, and revelled in. To bathe in the glorious luminance every chance routine presents and to warm oneself in the burning rays that tell of frolicking fire in an open grass plain with the whiney of a colt galloping across a shallow stream, what more could one ask for? To burn, burn, burn! Burn in the sun! The fantasy becomes an obsession; scorches everything to a charcoal black; and then reduces them to flaky, brittle cinders. But slowly, as the mind tires of unreal fantasies, the dreariness of the blank grey walls and dank atmosphere sets in, it starts to cling, to grow and then engulf and consume my entire being, and the summer, is much the same as the winter, just as night and day, work and play; to be confined in one's own solitary cell or to walk free on the concrete field; the lines between the two are blurred and they are one and the same.

The view through the barred windows are a portal to a different land, a window into the garden of Eden, of silver roses beneath the pale incandescent clouds and the fickle ray of light upon the blackened leaves which leads up and up and up into the heavens and I find myself enraptured at the creation of the single pearl of gleaming grey which grudgingly surrenders to the gaseous flaming ball that emblazons the outline of the horizon and incinerates everything in its path as the birds rise from their trees to pay homage to their austere ruler and the perfect, tiny dew drops of the night before leaps into the invisible cracks of the parched air as the flowers part their petals to appear in full bloom to greet the herald of a new day.

Sensations, thoughts; from the primal delight in the feel of objects in my hand to the cultured appreciation of intellectual works; I have experienced them all; they are the proof that I am alive. I think therefore I am. Which philosopher said that? Buried now, no doubt, buried in the tomes of history like how my identity is buried under the stormy sea of random thoughts and poignant emotions. I have lost myself it would seem, I know not what I think and therefore I know not what I see, and so it is much the same, day after never-changing day, until I find myself staring unseeingly at the dust that is stirred up by the autumn winds and freeze with the winter chill and melt with the coming of spring only to be burnt by the heat of summer.

But it did change as is the wont of all things; that autumn night, when the buds of the late bloomers sway in the chilly breeze that foretell of deathly frost in the season change to come. And the crickets chirruped and the insects droned and I found myself staring at the endless stars that lit the endless night. And as a puff of mist scudded across the dull silver moon, it left in its place a shapeless form that started as a tiny dot that grew and grew. And then I saw it, just above the great shrieking beech, an ageless child with long wild hair whipping in the wind and dark eyes that spoke of eternity and insanity, guarded, shielded and veiled, as if the naked gaze of those infinite eyes would drive one insane with the sheer enormity of its…… nothingness. And the child floats down like a satanic angel descending to Hell and I begin to make out the wings with which she glides upon and the claws that extended her delicate fingers and she bats the metal bars aside as if it were pieces of string and her clawed feet digs forcefully into the mortar as she completes her landing in a crouch.

The ruffled air settles and the white wings fold back to reveal a face too free of thought to be innocent, and much too young to be that of a child's. A blood red tongue flicks out and brushes against my cheek as I stare as one hypnotized by the evil curiosity before me. I risk a gaze into those dark eyes only to see nothing, no pupils, no irises, nothing but a blank infinite black and the child utters in a sibilant whisper "come…" and the devil incarnate grins to reveal her ivory fangs as I will my body to lean towards her as if my whole being would take flight to obey the monosyllabic command. The forked tongue flicks out again, snake-like, dark crimson, almost black, it was the colour of old, dried blood curdling within the corpse. And the eyes of the devil bore through my being with an insane delight and childish amusement as, in one fell swoop, she sank her teeth into the pulsing vein within my neck and drank the sacred wine that keeps all living creatures animated. String after string of inane gibberish and shriek after shriek of vulgar obscenities are forced out of my throat by the evil they call Fear. And when the feast is done, the child devil gives a screech of satiation, shattering glass and shaking the building to its very foundations and the sudden pandemonium it causes flings my consciousness into the void with the knowledge of nothingness and death.