403. Season of night, 5

(Rose)

Daiûa had fallen into a hole.

Daiûa had fallen inside a well.

And there she fought, days and nights,

In order to live again.

I fought. I fought. In an endless nightmare, with leaden sky, achromatic landscape, and an enemy I couldn’t vanquish, harassing me eternally.

My worst enemy kept coming at me. Her hollow shape kept coming back, always returning no matter how many times I destroyed it.

My hellish abyss, with different colours, and different levels of awareness.

As I fought in that pit of mud, strangling these shadows one after another, I ended up realising it.

I’m in the well of Daiûa. The enemies that keep coming at me and returning repeatedly, they already died.

Once I realised that, a part of the indomitable mixture of anguish and hatred inside of me, began to settle.

A little part.

That little part of ease in my numb mind, reduced as much the ferocity and number of the enemies coming restlessly at me.

Everyone I’ve killed, and more. Everyone I saw dead as well, turned into monsters in that nightmare I’m desperate to escape.

I couldn’t recognise any of them at first. Now I was ripping my family apart, as they tried to eat me alive.

But they were all... irrelevant, almost.

There was only one monster I focused all my wrath against.

I jumped on her, smashing her head off, again, and again, and again, and again...

My worst enemy ever met. You... Ogre!

I couldn’t stand anything reminding me of you. The colour black itself awoken my hate against you.

There’s a pain I can’t forget, that melted my mind, that dissolved like acid everything I was...

You destroyed everything I was.

I’m strangling you, crushing your sweet soft neck for the ten thousandth time. I feel the spine breaking and a second of relief. Then you’re in front of me again, and I jump on you again to kill you.

~

A boundless mind; without the limitations of a body, without the awareness of its limits, is basically stupid, and easy to obsess over something pointless.

Nothing made sense beside the raw emotions.

But at some point, after goodness knew how long, I noticed I was in that well.

I was in the hole of Daiûa, relieving the same trial on a loop.

I was trapped in that loop, until I would find a way out.

And because this body wasn’t real, because nothing was, it meant that my mind had to evolve. Easier thought than done.

Repressing my wrath and my desire to kill that disgusting horror was another colour of hell.

But it worked.

The more I managed to contain my wrath and rein in my impulses, the less hostile these shadows were.

R - So I have to make peace with myself, that’s it?

O - Yes. You can just thank me for that.

I ripped her throat out with my teeth. Another cycle of wrath and pointless fights began.

I was screaming my pain and hatred against you.

I just can’t... Forgive you.

~

Another time, again facing my worst nightmare.

Repressing painfully my desire to kill her on the spot.

R - Why the fuck are you here?

O - Why wouldn’t I be? I’m a part of you.

I have to kill her gruesomely a hundred more times before I can manage another line of dialogue with her.

But slowly, there’s sort of a progress.

A part of me is aware that it’s probably not the Ogre herself I’m facing, but a creature born from my imagination. My mind created it from my memories of her.

I hope so at least...

It wasn’t easy to realise, nor to accept.

O - You created me Rose.

I can’t accept that either, too much pain and hate pours from me at that thought.

Another hundred or so cycles of violence and despair go on.

O - You can’t get rid of me, because I’ve always been a part of you.

Maybe another two thousands cycles of agony and pain, denying with all my heart what I’m hearing.

I can’t accept anything she’s saying.

At some point, as I managed to stop the fight, it was another ghost facing me.

Another memory.

B - Accept your thorns Rose... Please...

R - You...

Another series of murdering shadows. I can’t accept...

O - I will always be a part of you.

I wish I could cry.

Thousands. Millions maybe.

I’m feeling numb, I’m becoming numb.

I feel completely numb at the next stop. Drunk from my own memories.

I watch the sky, dark green, and clouds moving around above me. Blue and white.

I’m dizzy.

She comes again.

At this point, there’s only despair left.

R - Why do you keep coming at me...

O - Because I am the part of you that you hate. I’m your own reflection. The more you hate me, the more I hate you.

R - I can’t... accept you... I can’t! What you’ve done to me!

I scream. I scream a lot. I can remember.

O - I’ve always been you, Rose. Always.

Always... Since the very first day we met. You created me.

I might have existed outside of your own body, but I’ve always been a part of you...

This monster you created, will always return to destroy you.

You can’t escape the fate you make for yourself, closing your eyes or hating your own shadow.

Sooner or later, as long as you hate me, I will return to eat you alive.

Because I’m a part of you!

~

I find another ghost. A light to shed some of these darkness.

Licht. Help me escape from here.

Blume. Save me from her again...

Anyone! I’m begging you!

Please help me go beyond the impossible...

I can remember moments of my final fight, against Licht, or against my body.

I’m not fighting anymore in this pit. I can hear the thunder in the distance, somewhere very far away.

I feel that I have to go, as I’m looking at the sky. I want to leave. I want to return to life again...

Ogre is still right there. Have I solved anything? Probably not.

R - I can’t...

O - I will always be there with you, regardless of how you feel about it.

R - How I feel about you... If you’re really a part of me... I will control you.

O - You should! Or someday, I will, again.

My hatred bounces in my heart, but something held. I feel the hand of Licht on my shoulder.

Empty time keeps passing, as I’m trying to think.

Somewhere, I’m not dead yet. I remember the air outside. I miss it.

I can feel now that I have a chance to return to reality, sooner or later.

A light will come to pull me out from this abyss, and bring me back to life.

I look at the sky, remembering the one being who is able to do that to me.

R - Blume... You’re still there with me...

B - I’ve always been a part of you Rose, in this world.

She’s shapeless, but I can see her.

The one I welcome happily inside of me. I can’t feel the tears on my cheeks, but I feel like I’m crying.

I missed you so much...

B - I will always be a part of you...

R - I’m so glad to have you...

The monster. The flower. The human. And me.

Thinking about a solution is a thing. Making your own mind evolve is another thing.

Awareness is a start, but there’s more.

What I’ve become is always changing.

Now I can see some of the parts that build me. Them. At a subconscious level.

It won’t change the past and what reality has been to me.

But it will be mine to grow again over that, with them inside of me, feeding what I will be.

Over another cycle of life and death, I learn from the ones that came before, and evolve with it.

Evolving over your own miserable death is really a painful experience, but that is my current life and existence.

Learning painful things.

Surviving what I can’t.

Dying and growing again... Evolving.

Blume gave me in her infinite kindness another chance at being alive.

So despite everything I’ve been through and done, I will try again.

To heal. To evolve, and to live in this world.

~