The Black Spot

Lee stared at the burnt, charcoal remains of the God on the forest floor, a few of the remaining embers, among the greying heap of ash, still glowing red with heat, the last vestiges of light fighting to remain alive despite the shadows rapidly closing in on them. Faint wisps of smoke rose out from the heap of cooked flesh, swirling higher and higher up in the sky, towards one large gathering of clouds - the heavens.

Lee looked upwards searchingly, and wondered whether each and every bad storm the village had ever suffered was due to those heavenly officials, living up in their palaces, high and mighty, away from the world which they governed. He wondered if they even cared about humanity, or if they were even capable of extending compassion towards their fellow Celestials.

Lee squeezed his eyes shut, his retinas seared with the image of the God burning in the inferno, helplessly trying to escape. Those red eyes of his filled with terror and desperation, clawing their way out of the heat, floating above the sea of flames, trying desperately to throw itself out. Any tears they produced steamed up and abandoned them, running away as soon as they were produced, eager to avoid suffering and to reach a better fate. The blood in those eyes, trapped in their burning vessels, boiled and burst out, turning black as coal, blotting out the white of his eyes, staining them red before they were also forced to tainted and left scorched.

There was only a small pile of ashes left, no pieces of the once pristine white bones which had their designated and designed within him, supporting him and carrying his body. None of his alabaster and sallow skin remained, torn to pieces by the fire and his face ripped apart by the very force of his harrowing screams.

There were only a pile of ashes now, all the glowing hot embers receding. There was not a single scrap of the blood red clothing. There was not a single stray piece of overcooked flesh, fallen prematurely and miraculously surviving the almost all consuming wrath of the fire.

The God's body had been disassembled uniformly by the lightning, striking out from the heavens at him. It was a calculated death, made to be painful, and provide calculated results. Every single piece of ash was the same size and shape, as if the God had simply been dissolved, if not for the horrible, maddening reality that Lee had seen.

He felt cold. He felt so, so cold.

He curled up into a ball as shivers wracked his frame unbidden. There was a swirling, gnawing pain his chest that reached out, like the branches of a dead tree, forcefully inserting itself into his limbs. He shook and wiped the tears, streaming down his face, into his knees.

He didn't want to move. He wanted to be alone.

He wanted to close his eyes, and cast his mind into a quiet void where he could forget everything around him. Somewhere where he could pretend that reality didn't exist and he was just all alone, floating in eternal darkness where nothing existed that could hurt him.

It didn't work. It wasn't working.

Lee wasn't huddling under his blanket, in his room at home.

He was on a forest floor, in an uncomfortably bright place, after he had spent an entire day walking and two long stretches running. He had just watched a man die before him, in possibly the cruelest way possible.

He had listened to his scream, and those screams now followed him like banshees into the recesses of his mind. The rapid increase in pitch to a screech followed him as Lee imagined a desert around himself, trekking through it to escape their reaching tendrils, intent on ensnaring him. He threw up mountains around himself, their sturdy, rocky cliff faces to be his barriers, but those rocks crumbled as the God's voice broke, his vocal chords shredded and burnt away, leaving cracking chokes and wheezing gasps, as all the walls crumbled around him.

Silence was all that remained.

And Lee was left open and exposed, eyes wide open as all he was all alone, left kneeling in front of the remains of the executed God.

Not even his brother bothered to stay and mourn, returning back to the clouds that had now blotted out the entirety of the sky.

Only Lee was left, alone, to mourn this God.

Already on his knees, he made to give a small prayer for his soul, before startling.

The God, who had died in the fire of divine lightning, probably didn't have a soul anymore, especially if his death had been ordained by the Gods. There was nothing of him left except this pitiful collection of what his body once was, a memorial and grave marker so fragile that the slightest gust of wind would destroy and scatter its pieces forever.

Lee still gave his prayer, bowing down as best he could while still sitting on his weak and bruised legs. He was too poor and too far away, from anywhere of note, to have access to paper money for burning, and there was no shrine for him to offer food for the dead God.

All Lee could do was bow and pray, too poor to offer anything else.

He heard and felt the wind slightly shift, becoming colder and blowing from the trees, as Lee kept his eyes closed. He wasn't expecting for the God's remains to stay where they were. He expected them to be scattered and carried away to the four corners of the land.

He needed to see this.

He was the only one mourning and he knew that he would be the only one to mourn.

The duty almost made Lee thankful for leaving home. He was in pain, but his sight, and this emotion was worth it. This saddening, pitiful, painful, thankful, tearing emotion.

Lee felt as if his body had become a battlefield; the apathy he had always felt, the shade and shadow that had been haunting him ever since his father had passed, was now being assaulted. Lee felt the cracks and lines of strife carve their way down his body, something pouring out from those chinks in his armour.

The remains of the God suddenly shifted before Lee's eyes.

The individual ashes, resistant to the wind as if its force and being were nonexistent, began to climb up on top of each other, rolling up higher and higher, every single piece and flake of ash spontaneously deciding to stick to each other and together, kept into one singular mass and pulled into one swirling and writhing being by a sticky black darkness. The shadows below the trees looked as if they were being sucked into the being, wispy, everchanging strands of darkness, almost like smoke making their way towards the ashes.

Flashes and sparks of a gleaming red light began to crackle from the rotating mass as it stood up from the ashes.

Lee scrambled back, the hot forks of crimson lightning lashing out onto the grass and rocks, scorching them.

He watched the monster that had chased him across the river emerge and be born anew, formed and sustained by resentful, demonic energy, born out of the hatred and desperation of a fallen God to live and survive.

A single, blood red eye slid open, from a tiny slit in the centre of that dark and evil mass. It's pupil whirled from side to side, spinning and falling down the length of it's body, before sliding back up towards the appropriate place where an eye would be, if it was still a God.

It's own pupil rattled in its eye ball, gradually expanding and contracting, as if it was playing and experimenting with a new limb or toy. Its line of vision spiralling, here there and everywhere, as it took a seemingly random path, eagerly searching around it, spawning thousands of hands, feeling around where the eye was not.

They reached out towards the light shafts of sun light, filtered through the branches and leaves of the trees, curling their fingers up towards it, eager to feel some warmth and the golden glow of light.

Smoke and a horrible sizzling noise erupted from them, and they flew back into the main body. It roiled and writhed in pain, twisting and contorting back into itself, curling up into the smallest possible shape it could force itself to be, only the smallest hint of the eye peeking out from among the darkness.

It focussed on the hut, and the creature immediately dashed inside of it, hiding itself away in the darkest corner of the structure. hiding under the blanket and away from the hole in the ceiling to allow the smoke from cooking to escape.

A small scroll fell out from the blanket, and rolled along outside the hut, into the sunlight and down a small slope, too far away for the resentful monster to keep hold of it.