'I shouldn't have said yes to the assignment.' I thought as I fiddled around with my locket.
They say horror saves you. The act of taking lives actually pleases our god, and in return, he gives us the most comfortable time of our lives.
Like the time when a boy was sacrificed—he had nowhere to go, nowhere to call home. He was promised good food in exchange for a session with God. The people said they wanted to look at what the god looked like. In his first meeting with God, his eyes melted. He lost his voice the next time. He was one of those who quickly became disposable. The finest trash you disregard rather quickly.
By the time he felt his own inner workings failing him, he realised he wouldn't live for long. And then the same people—the villagers who had promised him good food and life—threw him into a pit, where countless others like him rotted under the greying sun.
Then, I talk about the culprit. The victim, who was sentenced for purification, because his soul had been corrupted. Of what we have heard from the villagers, the culprit had done nothing but steal a glass that was left as an offering to the god. His purification was the meeting destined by the villagers to their god
.
He was screaming, or whatever was left of him. His own body was sucked off any fluid, his body became a rather dry husk that was left to be clung on the walls of his temple. But he wasn't dead. In a most peculiar show of devoutness, this was considered a miracle by the god.
A mercy to those who dared commit blasphemy against gods.
There were so many accounts related to the god and his devout followers. Fake community and foul devotees at the finest levels of having their senses washed over the definition of morality.
This was a classic case. I stopped flicking my locket.
The bodies thrown inside the pit flowed with the poison of hatred against those who took everything from them. No corpse looked the same in that pit—or rather, it wasn't a pit but a resting place given to those who had seen the god. A place which said it's the horror of the god, but it wasn't the same case for the villagers. They said it was a profound opportunity, not sought but given by the god.
There was only one. I heard several villagers speak of him—the one and only true mighty.
The benevolent ruler protects them and demands them nothing more than their own affection towards him. An affection turned into obsession by their own fanaticism. In their own world of illusions, they fail to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong.
Now, one gets curious about how this god looks.
They say there are accounts. Attempts made by people to describe him, but somehow they all feel different.
"There is no true body of God." I added this sentence to my notebook.
Years of research over these gods has told me one thing—that was not to believe in what your research tells about the god.
As I was pondering over the information, a little girl opened the flap of my tent and called me.
"Guest, your food is ready."
I didn't mind her entering my tent without permission, because others didn't feel a need for it either. The villagers can come and go wherever they want, and that is something that even guests can follow. That would have been a golden chance for me as a researcher. However, there was this one place no one except the village chief, the templars, and the head priest were allowed to pass.
God's abode.
"Yes, it would be helpful if you could bring the food here." I smiled at the girl and her innocence. She left with a nod.
A few hours later, another one entered my tent.
"Guest, the procession will start. It is needed that you leave behind any ornaments or such," the man said. He was the owner of the tents.
"Certainly." I replied back.
I was standing in the middle of a huge crowd, but from their attire, they mostly seemed to be villagers. There were excited murmurings on what they would see—if they would really meet their god this time.
The procession started with loud cheering, ceremonial bells, and dance—all played in full progression of an entertaining proceeding. Villagers cheered for them. They were the templars, closest devotees to the god.
And then, the proceeding drew nearer.
"I have heard that often, the god will take a look at us, and it is always the luckiest one to get chosen by him." Someone said, and I quietly noted it in my mind.
It was like a bride's cart. The cart was covered in satin, which looked bright black in colour. That just looked like stars glittering on the ground. In that chamber, which looked around two meters in height, sat the fabled god. His cart was a divine thing, which was pulled by the mortals.
Not mortals. But the ones blessed by the Gods. Or rather, in my opinion, the cursed ones. They had no hands, just their legs. They were carrying the weight of the cart with their teeth; the friction from the rope caused the skin to bleed, and the cut which had started from the tips of the lips had spread—ripping the whole mouth till the jaws were doing the task of holding, not the teeth anymore.
And they carried no expressions on their faces, just grim fanaticism.
The cart drew near me. The villagers around me started showering flowers to the procession cart. Offerings were handed down to the templars. It all went smoothly until the cart stopped.
Every murmuring stopped just then. Even the templars, which were the epitome of liveliness, stopped.
All looked unblinkingly in my direction.
I stopped as well, trying to process it, but years of fuck-ups have made me resistant to such situations, and I quickly found my grounding.
"God summons you." Surprisingly, it was those cart bearers whose voice reached me first. And then everyone started to follow it. The villagers around me quickly got sideways as their incessant chant beckoned me to go forward. Somehow, the flowers thrown earlier by the villagers had fallen to make a flowery path for me to the god's cart.
I made my way to the steps of the cart, and then a templar opened the gate for me. The glittering black cloth hid everything that was inside—or rather, it was fully empty.
If I was being honest, I was shit scared in that moment. This was probably the second incident that was of the same nature. The first one, I remember, was during my second assignment. I was still a novice, following behind a team of researchers, and our destination—a tribal village. I had fallen asleep and woke to the cheering in the middle of the night, watching as my superiors were being turned around in the fire by those same tribal people. Their teary eyes had left me one simple word, that fell heavily onto my ears even now.
"Run."
The necklace hanging on my neck was the only evidence that I had survived that night.
I couldn’t. Not when I was surrounded by the villagers and was this close to probably seeing the first god in my life. I entered the door.
The first thing I knew was the infinite darkness that felt like it was devouring me, eating me inside, and then a radiance illuminated in that unblinking darkness. The only hope of survival—I was drawn towards that light, and it was the first time I came face to face with a god.
The god was the epic epitome of luminance and hope. The divinity which encompasses the universe, the being followed and treated by the Kanin people. I fell onto my knees just then as I found my head touching the ground. My eyes, filled with tears, were in absolute reverence to the god.
"Child, what brings you here?" I heard the god for the first time. His voice was filled with continuous buzzing, as if the two of us were beings of very different dimensions.
I felt no need to lie.
"Oh god, pardon this fool's digressions. I have made a great mistake in recognising you." I said.
Still in wonder, the same feeling bloomed in my heart as when I was among the villagers. They shared the same feelings—wouldn't it make sense for them to be like this too? In the presence of absolute divinity, no one was left alone.
The heat increased, but I didn't notice. I was in a deep conversation with the god. I was learning about the nature of the universe, the nature of beings, the heart of men. But I didn’t know why, there was this question left in my mind.
If the god was truly omnipotent, what was his need to stay on earth? I asked the same from the god.
"My followers needed me here. Isn’t it the same for you?"
That was true. God replied in absolute. But why was it that the god was not able to show his brilliance to all? It must be because...
Because.
The buzzing around my mind continued, to the point that all I was hearing was buzzing. It penetrated deep inside me, like somebody was trying to ingest me whole. In that quiet and numb sensation, the heat radiating from my body felt extreme—to the point I felt myself burning.
I was the god. I was the villagers. I was the village. I was me.
Who was I?
The heat penetrating me burned everything. It was like that wildfire that knew no stopping till everything just burned to ashes.
Suddenly, I was flung. I know not where. But I was still in that cart, still inside the god's abode, still in the presence of God. But all I saw was a fake impersonation of a god. His real body was far too corrupt and disgusting to call it divine.
The thing was black, like an amalgamation of tar and all the filth in this world. It had many mouths, and they all looked different. Those mouths hid in them those blank, terrified expressions. The many faces of the villagers I had seen outside—and somewhere among those mouths, I saw one that looked extremely familiar.
I stared unblinkingly at what that mouth held, and it was none other than my face. But unlike others, it wasn't blank or terrified. It was screaming. A piercing tune of unexplained anger. The face burned, following behind the mouth burned, and everything started burning.
I became aware of my own body, and I started coughing—like a drowned man trying to empty every bit of the water in his body. But it wasn’t water that left my body, but tar. Black filthy thing, slimy and filled with maggots and all kinds of bugs left my body. And it wasn’t like I had to force myself—they were escaping my body.
And the faster they left, the lesser the incessant chattering invaded my mind.
I knew of the truth of the village, of the people, and of the god.
There was this account I had browsed in the archive—a very dusty one, having been left out for years because no one knew if the file contained the truth. It talked about a village in the distant past, which revered its own god, and its people similarly held the god in their highest regard. But one night, they had disappeared like a quiet mirage, disappearing from the face of the earth. The researcher of the Obtanus Emperoia told the tale about the lunacy of survival.
And from the state of affairs, I knew it was the same here too. So I followed the instructions my superiors left me before they became food. God bless their souls. Oh, no—not this god.
I knew this was the most optimistic chance for me to get the hell out of here, and I just did that.
"Run, Maniac, run." I cheered myself up and ran faster than I knew was possible. I didn’t care for the people, who were starting to resemble more tar than people, or the templars who had turned into a melting pool of goo, or even the cart bearers, who were just tar accumulating on a dead skeleton. I just ran.
I don’t know why that filthy thing left me alone. Maybe I might never know. I clutched to my only place of comfort—the locket.
This place was just like a mirage. The next time I came here with the inspectors of the organisation, there was nothing left to be found. Maybe my account will be left to gather dust as well. But I was sure as hell about what I had seen that night.
A month or two later, I was in my own office, when I was called out by my colleague.
"Hey Maniac. Do you know something?" Arston said. He was a three-star researcher.
"What?" Unlike me, who was just a two-star.
"That mirage incident you were studying. There was a report attached further into the file. Something related to the researcher of the case." Arston had that same smugness on his face when he knew things were interestingly going his way.
"What about the researcher?" I asked. However, I was starting to get a strong premonition about it.
"You know, he started acting all weird. His sleeping patterns changed, and suddenly he became a devout follower of the god. Until one day he disappeared. The investigators say they only found a filthy black-looking goo, filled with wretched bugs." He stared in my face while saying that. Hairs rose on my body as I fucking knew what he was trying to say.
"I don’t think that is something related to me." I said, showing no signs of interest, however at the same time I was sweating bullets.
"Haha, I know. I was just teasing you. See you at lunch." Arston left in that same unbothered fashion.
I waited for a bit. As the sound of his footsteps went away into oblivion.
"FUCK. I AM SO ROYALLY FUCKED. AM I GOING TO DIE? WHAT SHOULD I DO?" All my feelings came pouring down in those few sentences.
There was one option that came into my mind that could save me. But that meant asking that smug bastard Arston for help.
All three-star researchers have tools on them that protect them from mystical phenomena. And I could ask Arston to do some cleansing for me. But my ego won’t just allow for it. Fuck my pride.
"I am so screwed." I said while holding onto my hairs. This daily habit of holding onto the hair has been costing my hair on a daily basis.
Sigh. I smoothed out my hair and held onto my locket.
"I wish I had a tool like that smug bastard Arston." I said, finding my comfort in the still-clutched locket.
React
