Vent/Random Story Thread

[Sekot]

((There's a poetry version of this type of thread but I feel like writing and poetry doesn't fit that. Feel free to write your own venting here or just post random short stories, whatever strikes you.))

The city was burning, burning brightly. The sky was black as the void, as black as the soul of the child who sat on the side of the street. He stared off into the darkness with grey, lifeless eyes. He was a coprse, an automaton with no purpose in life. He sat as the city burned around him, as the inferno reached out to grab him.

The little boy laughed, his voice drifting to the heavens as a hollow cackle. He laid back, throwing his arms out as far as they could go. "Take me, you lazy fucks!" he shouted to no one.

The boy stood and turned to face the raging fire behind him. His eyes reflected the brilliant orange and red, shining white with anger. His hands balled into fists until his nails drew blood from his palms, he reveled in the pain it gave him.

"Am I alive? Should I care? Of course not, shall we just let this world burn?" he asked, stretching a hand out to the flames.

Hatred burned within him, burning his soul and hardening his heart. His eyes grew until nothing they could not see. The city, the city is burning. The boy, the boy is burning.

Sound the alarm and make no mistake about this
All the King's Horses and
All the King's Men
Have been sent to put this boy back together again
But somehow he must have predicted the fall

Dance, dance a devil's waltz. Sing, sing the Banshee's Requiem.

The boy fell to his knees, white hot tears streaming from smoldering eyes. He opened his mouth and bared his fangs and cried out to God for mercy. His soul, blackened and beaten lifted from his body and echoed the scream in a shrill voice as it danced solemnly in the street.

And so the city came crashing down and the fire died. A cold swept through and smothered the shattered metal. Ice grew and grew until the world was covered and could not breathe. The boy rose from the snow, his tears now frozen on his pale cheeks.

He looked into the sky and saw the Moon. The Moon laughed at him, the stars laughed at him. His frozen heart did not scream, did not cry. The boy merely made a wish, a silent wish spoken on a single breath.

And the Moon came crashing down, the stars crumbled and winked out. The sky became black as the void that was the boy's soul. The world shattered and the boy fell.

Falling, falling for there was no bottom. The boy did not scream, did not cry. He closed his eyes.

[Sekot]

Wings did grow from the back of a scarred man. They grew and grew, stretching and stretching until their full length had been achieved. The man lifted his head to the heavens, his eyes blood shot and his mouth agape in an angry scream. His hands clutched at his shoulders and bit into his flesh seeking the touch of another.

The wings were ebon and feathered, angelic but torn and broken. They would take this man nowhere, they would not engage in flight. The demon at his feet looked up and smiled with crooked teeth, offering his own salvation.

The man rose from his crouched position, his hands falling uselessly to his sides. The wings still stretched, still begged to flap and flutter. The man looked at the demon through sad eyes. "I want to be held," he whispered, "I want to be loved and to know that I can love another."

The demon merely smiled, causing the man to deepen in his depression. He sighed and closed his solemn eyes, breathing deep the thick stench of disease and weakness. The man's soul was rotting, festering behind a facade. His mind was set, a path of destruction must be taken for no great purpose than to bring some meaning to his tortured existence.

And so the man lifts his head and laughs heartily. It comes from an empty void, a falsehood that is readily apparent to all nearby. They hear the laugh and take pity on the man who had to force it. "What lies have I been told?" he cried to Oblivion, "What lies await me?"

And so the world opened up to swallow the man, and he gave what was left of his soul willingly. Power gripped him, flowed through him. His husk was now a conduit for rage and bitterness directed at everything. Bitter and beaten, the man refused to stand anymore. The wings became encapsulated by fire and scorched into the more common demonic appendages.

The man smiled, the lips parting to reveal serrated teeth. A child ran before him and stopped. The man looked upon the child and saw tears and bruises. He saw another creature, a woman stumbling down the street. Her bones were visible under her skin, no muscle or fat to cradle her frame. A man stole from another and shot the victim in cold blood when he resisted. Another raped a poor girl who was coming back from church.

Disgusted, the soulless man laughed once more at the plight of the world. Disgusted, he raised a hand to the heavens, palm facing upwards. Fire ran up and down his arm and burned off the flesh to reveal charred bones. He took the pain and kept it within him, the pain of the world.

More images flickered past. A woman cradled her son who had been made fun of in elementary school and who didn't have a friend in the world. A young boy sat on his toilet, tears streaming from his face. In his hand he held a knife, his free arm dangling and dripping blood on the linoleum floor. An abused wife could not stop her husband from abusing her children nor could she leave him for she loved him. A man cried as his girlfriend cheated on him in the next room. The soulless man raised his other arm to the heavens in the same fashion. Ice ran from shoulder to finger tip and then shattered, leaving nothing behind. It was now nothing, an emptiness, the world's sorrow.

Red rivers flowed on pale landscapes. Blue rocks tumbled across small hills. There was a great absence, there was more to fill the void than there ever needed to be. The soulless man cried out to anyone, anything, to God for forgiveness, to his mother, and to his friends.

His friends, who would call them that? Had they not driven him down deeper than anyone should ever go? But without them, where else would he be? Discarded by everyone, the man had nowhere else to turn.

He smiled.

Tears fell from closed eyes.

His wings lifted him into the sky.

He stretched the bony hand out to the world, wanting it all to burn slowly and to let the people revel in their self created infernos. He wanted the absence to be filled, the void to be filled, he wanted no more sorrow and to feel the warmth of his arm once again.

He laughed, mocking his own decisions, mocking his own sorry existence for a life.

He laughed at his weakness, at his sorrow, at his anger.

There was a gun and a knife. Two options. Where were the others? Where his friends who were supposed to stand by him? Where were those that were supposed to love him? What secrets must he constantly keep from the world to keep a meager happiness?

Was he happy? Could he be happy if he changed?

Where is the bottom for him?

The man cried out and burst into blue flame. He died in the air, his soulless form disappearing into dust in the wind. He tried to take on his sorrow, his anger, his pain and his hatred.

Alone he stood against the world and everything it tried to throw at him.

Alone he burned.

Do not pity this man for he made his own choices. Red rivers flowed on pale landscapes, blue rocks tumbled across small hills. He sought but never found. He traveled but never rested. His story is a boring one and uneventful. He deserved his place and all it would bring him.