A Serenade For The Innocent 77 Shush

I am sitting down, or am I? I am not quite sure, I cannot feel my body, but I can feel it exists. I cannot seem to move my body, but I can understand through some limited part of my consciousness that I am moving ever so endlessly in motions that I never thought I could ever create. I feel like I'm water and air and solid. I am liquefied but hard but spectral. I can see the darkness within me, but I could never comprehend what it truly means, all I know for sure is that I am in a superposition of both being inside of the darkness and being outside of it at the same time. I feel like I am sitting in front of a huge monitor, watching darkness unfold before my very eyes, but at the same time, I can feel my body connecting and interacting with the void itself lurking within the world that exists in the screen.

I can feel through my body, but my soul is detached from me, and now it's watching my flesh fly through an endless s.p.a.ce. I can see my surroundings through my eyes, but my soul also has its own eyes, and it's sending both signals into my brain, which inevitably makes my mind comprehend two different things happening at the same time. I can hear something like a bubble popping all around me like someone was boiling a ma.s.sive chunk of water from somewhere, but I cannot see anything that resembles that. Don't get me wrong, I can see things, I know I can see things, but my surrounding is just so empty, just as how I felt nothing all over my body, although I can sense it deep inside me that my senses are still working impeccably so.  

I was shivering like the coldness of the surrounding was trying to kill me, but I don't feel pain. Nonetheless, the cold was ever so dreary that I could almost swear like I am the very peak of Mount Everest while I'm bathing on the water from Antarctica. My body shook, though, I don't know how I know if I was really shaking. I could almost feel the way my body shivers, but from my perspective, it felt as if my brains were just telling me things that my body is sensing. It almost felt like I am so detached from myself, but I can't help the flow of my senses regardless of where I truly am and what is truly happening to me.

Amid the expanding darkness circulating both my detached body and soul, a vision came before me like that of a foreboding warning of a catastrophic threat. As I observe that my body is still shivering, I saw the image of two animal eyes gazing at me from a far off distance. He was standing from far away, but I can feel like his eyes are just a few centimeters away from me. I cannot see what he is, I cannot comprehend what his form is, and I cannot explain what his body looks like. However, his eyes were so big, so enormous, so gigantically ma.s.sive that I could almost swear, I was seeing a real-life rendition of what an anime eyes would look like. However, it was unlike any eyes that I could remember from any animated movie, series, or web show in the minimal span of my lifetime. Wait? Why did I say that? Am I dead? Is this what h.e.l.l looks like? Pretty comfy, if you ask me, but kind nothing as well. Then, is the one staring at me actually the devil himself? Is he Lucifer? Satan, perhaps, since he already rebranded himself after all that betrayal gig? I cannot explain, nor can I understand, but I guess, if this truly is h.e.l.l, then I am not surprised that the feeble capacity of my mortal understanding could not comprehend what it truly is.

Suddenly, as if being pointed by an imaginary spotlight coming from a nonexistent plane of existence, I slowly saw the outline of whatever body encloses the eyes in front of me. That was when I saw a stag from afar, gazing at me with his blackened eyes, alluring me towards whatever lies inside it as if he was the very envoy of darkness itself.

I saw an animal. It has fur and all, but it was unlike any animal that I have ever seen. It's a stag, as I have said earlier, but it's black fur differed so much from any other mammal I have encountered throughout my minuscule waking moments while I was still alive. It took me a while to realize it, but the stag was actually walking like a human, standing with two feet while his other two limps are moving like how average human arms would. The stage then moved towards me—very human-like, mind you—further showcasing the darkness surrounding him, from his eyes to his fur. I realized that the stag was wearing a maroon suit with a white jacket beneath it, paired by maroon pants and brown leather shoes embroidered by many archaic designs. The stag's coat and his pants are decorated with a striped pattern while his necktie is adorned by an arabesque pattern that I would frequently see from old gothic interior walls. His antlers were ma.s.sive, so ma.s.sive that I could swear both of them were just the same height as I, though it's not saying much since I'm a manlet. However, what fascinated me more in the never-ending amount of thin branches growing all over the stag's antler, further making him look more like a furred man with an antler's head, carrying a leafless tree on his head.

However, as the stag came towards me, the branches decorating his horns all fall out in rapid succession the more he got near me, but there were so many of them that no matter how much of them fell, more of it would still remain. The ancient-like texture of his antlers showcased that the stag was not a youngling, looking for a companion for his teenage adventure. No. As the many parts of the stag's antler fell, it turned into a rug below him, which artistically formed into a circle. When I lowered my head—or at least, I think I do— to see what was happening around the stag's feet, I noticed that the humanoid animal has decided to retreat away from me slowly and return from whence it came. When I raised my head once again—I'm not even sure if I really did lift my head, all I know is that my vision went up—I saw that there's more of his kind queuing up to enter a black door from a distance. I do not know what is inside of the door, but I can confidently guess that it contained more darkness. The humanoid stag gestured me to follow him, which I happily complied to do.

As I moved towards him—I am not sure if I walked towards him or if I floated—I realized that the other humanoid stags who lined themselves up to enter this mystic door, standing from a far off distance, are also wearing different suits with varying designs. I found it all, oh, so adorable, but the way their hallowed eyes gazed at me made me realize that I may or may not be interacting with a bunch of demons; thus, I decided to shut my mouth and lines up with them. It seems that I'm the last person in line since no one else was coming to stand behind me. The first antler who greeted me in this void-like plane was standing right in front of me, but he was not really interacting with me at all, save from that one time he gestured me to line up with him.

As we got closer and closer towards the door, I started to hear the many sounds of a girl crying in agony, coming from the other side of the door. It didn't stop, no matter how many stags entered the room. The female who's screaming inside of that room with varying degrees of agony based on how her voice sounded as she kept on screaming seemed to be in the receiving end of this world's cruelty. Meanwhile, I am one of the many people who must incur such punishment towards her, befalling the wrath of many G.o.dless thoughts living within the emotional world in my brain. I didn't feel anything at all, although I know that whatever may lay inside is actually an apotheosis of suffering based out of everything that humankind has envisioned what h.e.l.l would look like. Still, I felt nothing, or more like, I have no idea how to feel anything. It felt as if I had lost what it means to feel anything at all. I cannot understand what it means to move my body nor what it means to feel fear and excitement. All I know for sure is that the very concept of "feeling" had already been removed from the many machinations moving through my head.

When the stag finally took his first step into the room inside of the door standing before us, he turned around to gaze at me while using his head to point at whatever is inside and order me to follow him both at the same time. I entered the room and heard the screams of the woman very visibly, and it felt so raw that I could almost touch whatever I'm hearing. It felt so bizarre because I do not know how I'm doing it, but auditory functions are keeping my brain from recognizing what this woman sounds like. It is one that has always been inside of my head ever since I was young, and it was a voice that I would still often hear in my waking moments. The stag who's wearing a maroon jacket did something to the woman, but I didn't see it since his tall stature and gigantic build hindered me from peeking at whatever it is that he is performing to the woman.

My vision then traveled in a 360-degree motion, which made me scan the whole room swiftly, making me understand that all of the stags who had come before me were all standing around us with stiff bodies as if they're all nothing but a result of taxidermy. Then, my vision finally stopped scanning my surroundings, and it was once again directed at the stag who's standing before me. He was now looking at me with both his hands extended towards me, and both his palms are open as if he's asking me to hold them. I didn't do whatever it is that he's trying to make me do wordlessly as I walked past him to see whoever is the woman who shall endure the meteoric a.s.sault that I will perform.

What I saw is a woman bounded on an X-shaped platform. I do not know what it is, but I can see her face, and I can understand that she has a body, but I can only see her face, nothing but her face. IT was filled with bruises, blood, and wounds. Although the woman's face is covered with nothing but an endless array of different-colored injuries, I could still recognize her face.

It was my mother's face.

"hUuuUuUuuURrrRRrrRrTt HeeEeEeeeEErRrrrRRr." I heard the stag whisper in my right ear as he had his two limps on both of my shoulders. My vision then fell onto my hands, or well, at least that's where my hands should be, but that was not what I should be observing at the moment. Instead, what I saw in my hands was all the weapons ever created in human history. My vision then raised up, making me look at my mother's face again as I felt my right hand readying itself to strike.

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I panted, I gasped, and I heaved. What was that? I could sweat all around me as my body shivers in fear.

That was when I realized the outline of a person sitting a few feet away from me.

"You're finally awake."