Requiem

Note: This story contains attempts of suicide, mild gore, and disturbing encounters.

-

Death toyed with my soul, alluring my heart with fatal seductions that I alone, was powerless to refuse. My desires were like chains shackled to my wrists, I had to fulfill whatever wanton lust that proposed itself to my morbid appetites. I wanted to stop, but my body didn’t let me. It had a will of its own, defying the convictions of my mind, and handing over the reins to my wayward heart. 

I hated what I was becoming, the echo in the glass, was merely a shell of someone I no longer recognized. I clung to the scriptures for refuge, yet every verse seemed to rebuke me, each depiction I read of hell seemed to describe a fate I could not escape. I felt as if the Gods had turned their backs on me, as if hope was nothing more than a chimera. 

Kill. 

Something seemed to whisper inside me. I tried to shut the voice out, but it only seemed to grow louder, until it shattered my eardrums with its deafening shrieks. I sought out victims like candy, my bloodlust manipulating my limbs on phantom strings, as I helplessly submitted to its demands and lost myself to the monster inside. I was too ashamed to beg the Gods for mercy, I was unworthy of Yeshua’s blood, and figured I should accept my fate. Hell is all I was worth. The families whom I had deprived of a loved one, were no doubt begging for my demise, and pleading with the Ancient one to blot my name out of his book of life. 

I baptized my pillow with tears of remorse, subsequent to every kill I had mercilessly executed. I put a knife to my throat, but fear subjugated me from following through, so I put it to my wrists and let the blood pool into a river at my feet. The crimson flow was traumatizing, as it ripped me away from the present, and into flashbacks of all whom I’d deprived of its essence. 

The voice inside would laugh with morbid ecstasy, contradicting my screams of anguish, rivaling those of my victims. 

Monster. 

The voice dubbed me, branding me as its property as it used my body to carry out its depraved lusts. The face inside the mirror sickened me every time I forced myself to look at it. I bloodied my fists in annihilating the depiction portrayed of myself, until I was nothing more than a million shards at my feet, as the glass crumbled from the frame holding it in place. I’d rather look into a portrait of Satan, for it would reveal more truth about my character than a mirror ever would. The glass only portrayed my exterior. I was a friendly, outgoing person in the eyes of the world, yet in the eyes of the spiritual realm, I was drowning in blood that wasn’t my own.

I tried to run, to conceal myself from the world for the sake of others, but that only seemed to infuriate the voice inside. I would clamp my hands over my ears, I would cry and plead for the day I was born to be nonexistent. I would curse everyone who rejoiced upon my birth, for little did they know that they brought a killer into the world. Isn’t it ludicrous? That life can also end life? My life would bring about the end of several more. 

The earth seemed to hate my existence just as much as myself. The sky mourned till it could weep no more, the wind shrieked and howled as it clawed at my window, and the sun would glare so fervently that I felt the need to shroud myself in darkness, for its acrid glare would devour the flesh from my bones if it could. I sought refuge in death, and tried to usurp my fear of it as I acquired sanctuary in the embrace of a noose, although it failed to fulfill its duty. I searched for consolation in over-indulgence of pills, only to regurgitate them, even the knife blade became blunt against my skin, refusing my blood passage. 

WHY? How could the Gods be so cruel as in letting me live? Was death perhaps too merciful a fate? Living with myself was torturous enough, death would not only alleviate my soul, but also send it to where it belonged. How I craved it, till my tears took on a crimson hue as they stained my ashen skin. 

Exhaustion usurped my strength, and darkness coerced my vision as I collapsed through the floor. I found myself drifting through a long tunnel, a cacophony of shrieks was music to my ears, music I would forever have to endure. The air was scorching hot, as my soul continued to descend further into the abyssal darkness. I was suddenly immersed in a pit of flames, and just as a bloodcurdling wail was pried from my lips, the darkness opened and I saw the face of Yeshua gazing at me from above, with such pain in his loving eyes that it hurt far worse than the flames infusing every fiber of my being. 

How I begged for the mercy I once deemed myself unworthy for. I was unashamed of my past mistakes, as the pain was far too intense for my durability. I writhed and howled like a fiend as I sought to scramble out of the pit in which my soul was brewing, yet when I thought I had found relief, I was only knocked back into the flames by a hideous monster, that cruelly laughed at my torment, enjoying the arias of my agony with inhumane euphoria. 

Just as I was ready to accept this eternity of hopelessness, I came back into reality, discovering that all I had experienced was a mere vision of what my fate could become. Despite the malignant voice planting wicked seeds into my heart, I sank to my knees and cried out for mercy, willing to leave my fate in the hands of men, then in the hands of the One who had the power to destroy my soul. Being the incredibly merciful God he is, Yeshua forgave my faults, although I was not without consequence. I took refuge behind prison bars, where the world would be safe from my murderous impulses, while I sought to give my life to Christ, and be alleviated from the darkness damning my soul. 

“I’m free.” I soliloquized. Despite being housed in a cage, I felt far more free than I ever had before.