Ixu Ixu/Oyasumi

Ixu Ixu. Standing on the front of the stone temple, black oblisks rising back and forth from the ruins, he walks slowly towards the staircase. Down and out, over and under. We don't decide where to go or what we'll do. The same thoughts repeat on an endless timer, running forward. Wherever we seek to go, wherever we try to hide, it's always there. A strange, unwanted sensation runs along the back of his neck. The other demons will be worried. It's a bit of a joke among them. Who can say what they feel for certain? Certainly not him. And now, we walk, we run, we rise, we look directly at the sun and see nothing.

However, a vast multitude of environs away, there sits a man on an emaculate marble wall, rising to look over the kingdom it encapsulates. What was once known in the mind of the dead, in the mind of a child long gone, has come to represent something that no one would even come to ponder more than once. How humerous that is. Life is full of these little miracles, how it can be found that something that was once so important is now washed away and forgotten. It's all a joke. And no one is laughing. It didn't land right. People shuffle their feet and look at each other with sideways glances, wondering if this is the punchline. If that's what was supposed to be delivered. Sweat beads on the brow of the man. He gazes down towards the water, rippling and reflecting the moon, and he remembers a campfire.

In that long lost valley, hidden between the mountains clearly visable from his vantage on the wall, he had erected a tent. He had set it up as he had once before, and a million times before and after, but her voice was still ringing in his ears. He can hear it now... but the memory is faded and fractured, and he can't experience it the same way. He won't get to ever again.

He doesn't get a name. Ixu Ixu does. He prefers the singular. Ixu Ixu is the proper name. The true name. True to old tales, these names have power. Ixu Ixu doesn't hide that from anyone. There's no need to. There is no point. He doesn't fear the control of others. All he desires is to feed off the wandering dead, the other demons who stalk the land in search of their own nourishment. Laughing, he looks from the top of the ruined temple staircase in the direction of the city surrounded by marble walls. Sinking into a crouching position, Ixu Ixu runs his black hands along the uppermost step. It is warm still, the setting sun casting long shadows across the ruins. Gasping, he pulls his hand away.

Back on the top of the marble wall, he stands up. He turns around. He can hear shouting. He can hear the thundering of boots rushing up the tower on the corner of the wall leading to him. He can hear them calling out and begging for him. He looks at the moon. Here, a hundred miles away from where Ixu Ixu stands in his ruined temple, the man can feel the demon's hand running over the warm onyx. Laughing, he turns around and opens his arms. He can see the face of Diara Lashtar, the second-hand of the moon along the cold silver expanse that lights up the night.

Ixu Ixu doesn't stay for long.

Now, we take a break. And now, we break. A mind not worth recording, unaware of anything and unable to speak itself, he puruses a forgotten and run down book shelf in the hopes that he can find anything or anyone in the pages. Nothing. He gets nothing.

I walk away from the scene of the disaster. Shapes twist and twirl in my vision, the car engulfed in flames and burning away into a blackened husk. No one gets to heaven.

Hark! Hellbound! Words sinking and twisting! All of humanity's secrets bound to the ground and open for me to read! What a joyous sensation! Give me the rope. Let me tie it into a noose. Let me hang it from the tree. Let me break down the door to the garage. Let me go.

I want to be free.

What a delusion of the mind. What a childish thought. Build upon what has already been set. Don't worry about an unstable foundation. Don't worry about the ropes. Don't worry about the tropes. Focus on telling the story as it happened. Do not embelish the borning parts. Do not edit the sad parts. Do not gloss over the tiny details that don't mean anything. Do not worry and do not wander. Sit down in that chair in front of me and ask yourself "Did I do this?"

And you did.

However...

However...

Gasping for air and searching for words, completely unable to move, I can now see what this means to me. Still paralized in confusion. Still making the same attempts. Still doing the same thing that we already proved didn't work. Still running backwards. (through hallways)

And don't reference something I don't understand. Speak clearly. Use proper annotation. Inflict your voice properly. Do not mumble. Do not hold on to the specific memories and specific phrases that you claim have shaped you to get you where you are.

No longer eating. No longer speaking. Sit down on the green grass and watch them running through the playground. Curse the sky. Curse God. Curse a hundred Gods. Just know that there's nothing that will do to change anything.

When I was a child, I felt as if I had already been alive for a hundred years. A thousand years. But it was, again, a delusion. Without a proper frame of reference to understand exactly what it means, time is an endless expanse that we cannot properly metabolize, so we pretend that it is something more than it actually is. We need symbolism. We need something to represent. We need an ending to this story.

But we already know how this story ends.

"Finally," he says. "I have achieved everything that I have ever wanted. I live in peace. Trouble, anxiety, even happiness... it is all gone from me."

"So," he says. "What do we do now?"

"I think you know."

He laughed.

"Shall we return to this boring everyday life?"

He says nothing.

"...die, then."

Gritting his teeth, he holds the knife in his hand.

"No," he whispers. "You die."

And he plunged the blade of the knife into his eye, his head splitting apart and blowing backwards against the crumbling wall behind him.

Laying on the dirty roof of the abandoned factory, blood pools about him. He cannot see very well. He cannot see out of his left eye at all. Gasping for air briefly, he stops and holds his breath.

And says:

"Goodnight."

And closes his eyes.

And feels a hand grasp his.

Opening his eye briefly, he sees a shadow looming over him, smiling.

"Found you."