Chapter 43: Churning Madness
W, w, what...
Cold sweat poured from my clenched fists.
Ba-dump!
My heart began pounding at me from the inside out, rattling my stomach with a sense of nausea.
Screech!
Screech!
Screech!
All of them, one after the other, they retreated, and-
Thud.
-knelt on the ground, all but Yulei, who held her head down.
Even Hilda turned around and promptly lowered herself, then, simultaneously, as though it had been practised repeatedly:
""I greet His Majesty!""
Their voices echoed throughout the gazebo, digging deep into my rattled heart.
Sizzle.
A step, was it a step? Is it a step?
Is that the sound of a step?
What does a step sound like again?
Sizzle!
Ah, no, that's not the sound of a step.
But.
Sizzle!!!
It's the sound of its steps.
The voices have stopped.
Thenightmareslingeringinthebackofmymindnolongerwhispertheirinsanities.
Ashadowdrowningoutthelight.
Ashadowbrighterthanlightitself.
It has been over five years.
And to this day, I cannot forget.
The madness.
SIZZLE-!
It loomed behind me.
I could feel it.
I could hear it—through the mad pounding of my feeble heart, I can hear it.
I could also see the other six.
I could see them looking at it.
Listening to it.
But then, their eyes shifted slightly to the side; they seemed to be looking at something smaller than it, shorter than it, standing right beside it-
""Greetings, Lady Esme of Light.""
""As His Majesty has stated, we apologise for our transgressions.""
Esme?
As it stated?
Is it speaking?
...That's right, I was never able to hear it in the first place.
But why is Esme there? With it?
"Psst... Alora~ Sorry for this mess..." Esme whispered in my ear, yet I did not dare turn and look behind me.
"I brought Father along to fix it."
Why?
Why did you bring that thing along?
HypocritIamasmuchofathingasitisalsoathing.
"Huh? Yes, Father." Promptly stepping back, seemingly under its request, Esme left my side.
Now;
Hilda, Yulei, Vanessa, Jill, Hildekar, Elden, and Nemora all lay there, kneeling, mostly.
Esme was also somewhere behind me.
And their eyes were all staring right behind me.
Not even a metre behind me.
It stood.
77,777,777TheonethatcreatedthislovebetweenmysisterandIisrightbehindme77,777,777.
Silence enveloped us for a moment.
My heartbeat ran so loud that I worried the others could hear it-
Ba-dump! Ba-dump! Ba-dump!
-the stitches of Curses connecting my heart together threatened to fall apart all over again; if they do, I'll vomit blood in front of Esme.
I can't let that happen.
Still.
I.
...
Huh?
I did not hear a voice.
That was not a voice.
It's-
It's-
Isthatmeanttobeahand?
Madness.
Horrible madness.
Brain-numbing madness.
The personification of madness, our supposed father, was gripping my shoulder.
That thing was supposed to be its hand.
Yet.
Madness.
All I could 'see' was madness;
An emotion;
A sensation;
A feeling;
Madness; madness;mdandess;madnessmadnasdmmsdm-!
Squeeze.
My brain returned.
And, once it did, I realised the obvious.
I was meant to greet it.
I was meant to turn around, gaze at it.
Esme will become suspicious.
I must turn.
I must.
I-
I dare not turn.
The reason for it is simple.
I am scared.
I don't want to look at that thing.
Sweat flooded my body, making my clothes stick to my flesh. My bottom felt cold and was uncomfortably shifting, struggling to release from the chair's material sticking to it.
I was hyperventilating, every breath synced with my wildly screaming heart.
But I must.
Biting my gum, I slowly turned myself towards it.
I stood up from my chair towards it.
Towards what I feared from the bottom of my broken heart.
Thus.
Having turned.
Having stood.
I saw.
The personification of madness, as I remembered it, as it lingered in the back of my mind for years, and as it shall for years to come.
It lay there.
An amalgamation of madness in its purest sense.
The madness lay isolated from the world, a veil separating it from all that is true; I could not go mad, we could not go mad, for it stopped us from going mad.
We should be mad.
We should be crazy.
I may already be both.
But gazing upon the personification of madness years later, after having already Descended to the First Step as a Defiler; why can only I see the personification of madness?
Why do the others not see this thing?
I do not understand, nor do I dare understand.
The personification of madness still held onto my shoulder as I stared at it.
And I-
I-
It'sstaringatmethroughthisveilofmadness.
I can feel a distinct gaze piercing through the ensemble of madness.
The gaze didn't feel like that of our mother's: a tense look flooded with radically varying emotions.
No, its gaze was blank—simple.
Like that of an observer.
I feel no sense of familial love, interest, disdain, boredom, or any of the sorts;
Nought but a plain gaze.
"G-" I bit my tongue and hastily put together a sentence, "Greetings, f, f, father-" The word came out with a tone stenched with reproach and fear.
Is it saying anything?
Is it speaking?
I can't tell.
Slipping my gaze aside at Esme, she looked at me with a loving smile in her golden eyes. Those pretty eyes utterly failed to sooth my heart.
What is it doing?
Why is it still there, staring at me?
What does it want?
To 'solve' this issue?
I don't believe that shit.
Spitting out an apology through chattering, painfully clicking teeth, "S, sorry for the delayed g, greeting..." I was trying to find something to say, something to do, otherwise, otherwise, otherwise-
Imaygomadnonetheless.
Yet.
It released its grip.
It let go of me.
Still, I struggled to tell whether it was speaking or not;
What it was contemplating;
What its face looked like at that moment.
Does it even have a face?
No idea.
However, I do know this.
My heart may explode into pieces at any moment.
I can no longer sustain the Cursed stitches holding together the ruptured muscle.
It's pounding and pounding.
Beating and beating.
It almost reminds me of punishment.
It's bubbling up, squirming in the pits of my stomach amid the madness of this being. This day was meant to be pleasant, the weather nice, and the world running along like clockwork.
The kids around me were holding a court session of sorts on me, they were still all around us.
And Esme, Esme was right there, looking at me, smiling at me, proud of her decision to bring the personification of madness.
I can't let the blood come out.
I can't let the vile Curses reveal themselves.
I cannot allow even a hint of my purpose to be exposed.
If Esme were to know, were she to worry, were she to disparage me; were she to hate me!
...
I will kill myself.
ForIwouldhavelostallpurpose.
So, why?
Why?
Why do you still stand there, personification of madness?
Why do you still stare at me?
Why is on one talking, why is no one helping, Esme, Esme-!
...It's coming up.
A mixture of torn flesh, rotten organs and pieces of my heart that had been pulled out of their original position and into circulation alongside the flow of Curses.
An amalgamation of filth.
Glug.
It's rising.
All eyes were on the personfication of madness.
All eyes except for its eyes and Esme's.
...Stop looking at me.
Stop-
Flinch.
The core of my body flinched, sunken into a scrutinizing abyss; a cold, vast, and endless gaping hole of ice.
Its gaze changed.
And I immediately understood what that change was.
I immediately understood why it had come.
Why it only appeared now.
After all these years, after all of these days of freedom; it all made sense now.
It had given me enough time to get closer to Esme, to build up the lies. It had given me enough time to know her friends, her closest friends, and build up even more lies there.
It had given me enough time to start caring ever so slightly.
Till...
Gulp-
...till I had built an inescapable castle of lies.
Surrounded from all sides in the lies used to build the facade that is this creature, one leak is all that it needs and the castle will crumble; torn apart by the truth.
And, once that occurs-
Once the truth is revealed-
Once I am tucked into a corner-
My Curses shall flourish.
This Perfect Cursed Doll shall grow.
...And I shall be isolated, again.
Free...
I stared up into the gaze of the personification of madness.
...yet....
Into where I felt its gaze come from.
...not free.
Glug-
The liquid was rising.
Then, again, I notice another obvious, glaring fact.
A fact born from the chestnut and blue overflowing across my vision from beyond the madness.
Our mother and the personification of madness do not align in their goals.
This is not part of mother's plans.
Mother gave me the opportunity to reveal the truth.
Yet, the madness has ripped that opportunity from my hands and has tossed it aside, leaving me empty and bare before my precious sister.
Flinch.
My screaming heart shivered beneath its gaze.
...I see.
The flow of liquids continued to rise.
...Everything has become clearer.
My Curses drowned out the light, leaving none but me and the madness;
Andtheflowofchestnutandblue.
...Mother and the madness, to them, Esme is the neutral zone of this Domain of Light.
She shall always remain untouched.
Pure.
Perfect.
...And I:
Glug-!
I am the pawn that belongs to neither side.
A pawn that can be played by either side.
Used by either side.
If Esme is the light side of the board, I, once the board has been flipped, am the dark side of the board; a shadow free to be moulded as they like.
Thus.
There I stood.
In this odd darkness.
Far beyond, at the edge of the faintly outlined pathway, stood mother.
Right beside the madness, highlighted in gold and the purity of light, stood my sister.
And, right before me, a hands-width away, stood the personification of madness.
Today, there is no escape.