Chapter 1: I’m sorry

What does it mean to be abandoned by god?

To live one's life as a forsaken, sacrilegious blasphemer.

A beacon of unanimous hatred, a prostitute afore the coagulated spite of mankind.

"Die! DIE!! DISSIPATE FROM THIS REALM, YOU HERETIC!"

A scourge, a mephitic pestilence upon the world, a being whose life transparently possessed and kindled nought but omnipotent acrimony.

A christened harbinger, an augural prophet of despair.

"YOU!! YOU DEMON! YOUR EXISTENCE HAS DESECRATED THIS TOWN!! PERISH!!! WEEP!!! REPENT!!! APPEAR A MIRROR AFORE THE ANGUISH OF THOSE YOU ROBBED!!"

Words of hatred, paradoxical to the practice they extolled boundlessly reverberated amid the monotonous, spacious realm. A place of anterior worship, now a sermon of barbarous torture, a self-righteous sacrifice upon martyr apathetic.

A church, a locale of platitudinous monochrome, earth petulantly profaned a universal stone listlessly sprawled afore myriad cannibalistic countenances, its body spasmodically blighted by tumorous oak pews, colouration of prosaic brown dissonantly stained an effulgent orange.

"REPENT!! REPENT!!!! GIVE YOUR LIFE FOR THE MYRIAD FORSAKEN!!!!! WHY!!! WHY MUST YOU WALK IN PLACE OF THEM!!!!" A voice distinctly aged torturously wept, bearing a tone pervertedly begrimed, fracturable, upon precipice of shattering, its disharmonic body reprehensibly joined afore cacophony eternal.

A chaotic hiss. Progenitor afore carcass serpentine, a hydra of impassioned, vehement orange—A flame, a conflagrant corpse bearing gluttony evermore satiated, for amid body temporal, demoniacally ephemeral brewed zoetic countenance synonymous with that of a human, a figure diminutive, miniature.

A boy.

A juvenile no older than five, flesh of antecedent anaemic snow besotted by scourge of tempestuously upheaved skin, a surface scorched, denuded of innate sentineled protection. Smoke languidly coalesced amid lungs calamitous, a Mephistophelian demon, for in place of pestiferous, nauseous flem brewed carrion claret, blood impetuous to escape their mortal fetters. Stygian coal bore a carcass of clothing, a torturous bloodcurdling veil enigmatic upon the boy's face, a cadaverous shawl dissonantly removed from a stream of smouldering fulgent tears.

"I'M SORRY!!! I'M SORRY!!!! PLEASE!!!! PLEASE!!!! I'M SORRY!!!!! IT HURTS!!! Please…I'm sorry," A voice infinitely penitent deliriously wailed, posture intermittently broken, flecked by infinite choruses of expunged blood, and yet, to the child's despondent, incautious wail resonated nought but a sinful cacophony.

"CRY!!! WEEP!!! YOUR MEER VOICE CARRIES NOT THE PRESTIGE TO RETURN THE DEAD!!! HOW DARE YOU WALK IN PLACE OF THEM!!!! YOUR MERE PRESENCE A PLAGUE UPON THIS TOWN!!!!"

"HOW MANY PERISHED, SLAUGHTERED AFORE YOUR CHILDISH MASK!! A DEMON!!! A TRIBULATION SENT BY GOD!!! MY DAUGHTER!!! THE ORPHANAGE!!! WHERE YOU PRESIDE, NOUGHT BUT RUINOUS CALAMITY FOLLOWS!!!" Bellow unmistakably feminine, vexatiously roared, impassioned by fuel infinite, the multitudinous tragedies cognate with the boy's existence. How many lives lay lost afore his all-consuming wake, a maelstrom of supertemporal necrosis.

Fire lacerated the boy's ankles, blistering flesh hitherto untainted. It bubbled, it hurt, and yet, the child failed to cry. His mind, whether it be because of an inundation of boiled blood or the myriad pustules perpetually forming and exploding aneath his flesh, simply chanted but an exclusive phrase, a monotonous beseeching apology.

'I'm sorry…I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean…didn't wish to take anything from anyone…I'm sorry,' The child inwardly drolled, twain-shrouded pupils refracting a sight not of the present, nor even a fictitious apocryphal future, but the past. A hyperborean winter night, a curtain of absolute darkness, where neither city light polluted nor star miraculously shone, a shroud of snow veiled the land, staining one's flesh a horrific shade of pink.

Yet, the boy remembered not the joyous memory of replicating an angelic visage but miniature hands stained a deary, pestiferous crimson and a sky intermittently laced by lights of blue and red.

Plight eternally torturous stigmata upon the child's mind, his very first cognisant memorisation, a reminiscence beggared of progenitors.

'I'm sorry,'

"Repent, you accursed rat!! Lest we see more of your plague upon our town!!" The booming voice, omnipotently melodramatic, bellowed, yet once more, the boy did not lament such words, for he was right.

He was a plague.

His existence oracular to nought but misery upon all whom he met.

A grand building, a monument, a testament to charity where apocryphal families were begotten, an orphanage, its doors, anteriorly welcoming of all, now lay shut, toppled amidst smouldering wreckage, distant throes, shrill and juvenile antecedently laced by notions of childish negligence a echoed a dissonant choir of despair. For their epilogue had begun before chapter one had even concluded.

Yet the boy merely watched on, his mind brimming with the clamorous ensemble that heralded the town's prophesied salvation. Eyes of enigmatic colouration, spasmodically flecked by incandescent protruding tears, pregnant with notions of hope, a delusion that perhaps someone would survive, that something would be different.

His heart was sent a flurry when he saw motion, the assisted visage of his peer, and yet, his mind would lay ruinous, forced to observe that child's discordant, stridulous dying breath.

'I'm sorry…'

"DIE! MAY GOD FORGIVE THIS LAND FOR EVER HOUSING YOU!! WHAT SIN DID WE COMMIT TO DESERVE SUCH PESTILENCE!! NOW DIE!!! PERISH SO THAT WE MAY PRESIDE!!! FREE OF YOUR ACCURSED PLAGUE!!!" The man declared, as the boy's monotonous chant of martyrdom appeared quiescent, his eyes blackened, but a mirror of comatose coal apathetic, uninhabited.

He was dead, yet the fire continued to rage, ardent afore notions of harrowing, bloodcurdling demise, its gluttonous, sloven stomach momentarily mollified, multitudinous tongues dampened by saliva of blazing blood.