Chapter Text
[ Y o u f e e l i t , d o n ’ t y o u ? ]
Like something is down there—lurking down below the roots and the dirt and the sins buried in the graves of those who wished they could be forgotten. Like something is crawling underneath the earth, trying, trying to come up for air, but it’s being pushed back down by its own pride and greed.
You feel it sitting on your tongue, the cicada’s wings tickling the roof of your mouth, begging for something sour to come up, something to feed it’s miserable, loathing soul. It has made you hold your tongue at times when you should not have, and has made you speak when you should have remained silent. Do you wish you could spit it out? Do you hate it? Do you hate how it holds your words hostage, begging the ransom of your autonomy?
[ D o y o u h a t e h i s f a c e a s m u c h a s I ? ]
Can you feel the serpent’s pulse, thumping, racing, rushing against your skin? Can you feel its scaley body slithering into place, constricting around your bones, tightening, crushing, locking you in place- killing. Do you ever wonder how long you can go on like this for? Can you feel it piloting your movements, can you taste its venom in your words, your deeds?
Do you ever close your eyes and feel like you can sense the shadows crawling behind your eyelids, like if you open your eyes you would set the darkness free? When you open them again, is it light you are letting in, or darkness you are letting go?
[ D o e s w h a t y o u d i d h a u n t y o u ? ]
Is that why you fight so vainly to retain that darkness? Does it keep you up at night, the things you did and the things you will do? Does it scorch your soul in the very way it does mine. Or do you feel nothing, as I do, on the nights when there is no part of you left to mourn over?
Do you regret this thing you have become, or has it made you numb?
Have you had enough? Have you been hurt enough? Have you hurt other people enough? Despite what you believe, it will never be enough. Whether you want it to or not, the regret, the hatred, the hurt, it will continue to repeat and relive itself— an endlessly vicious cycle that does not restart, it merely goes on.
[ T h e c i c a d a w i l l a l w a y s s i n g , l o d g e d i n t h e b a c k o f y o u r t h r o a t , a n d t h e s e r p e n t — t h e s e r p e n t w i l l a l w a y s w i n . ]