Purgatory. The land of stones, bones and souls. Weirdly entangled with other worlds, weirdly connected to me. It was a land full of contradiction. Two lovers stood opposite of each other, not a single other soul in sight.
I was one of these lovers. The god of death, Aska, was the other one. Before we said anything, we stared at each other for several minutes, eyes squinted together and waiting for the other one to start. It was me who broke the silence first.
“You know, I missed you. You could have written some letters or so. Contacting me once since I came to Solaris is not too much, is it?” I pouted but still stared into his eyes that dripped with hostility. This hostility wasn’t even directed at me, but rather at everyone and everything.
“And I thought we agreed on a long-distance relationship.” Aska claimed. I shrugged a bit and then put up the friendliest smile I could muster. Immediately, Aska´s expression changed as well into a slight smile. No more was the hostility visible, instead, it was hidden by a veil that both he and I could put up whenever we wished to. “So, how was your time so far? I heard you made a few friends?”
“Oh, you know, I met this girl. She is really nice, the issue is that she is dead though … could you perhaps reincarnate her on Solaris again?” I asked nicely.
“It´s so great you finally found a friend. Why don’t we go over to this suspicious-looking barn over there and talk about it?” I pointed behind me towards a barn out of wood. It looked incredibly out of place here, especially because colourful flowers bloomed around it.
“Sure thing!” I began to stroll towards it and breathed in through my nose rather loudly. “Hey, it does smell like blood here, doesn’t it?” Aska wrapped his arm around my shoulder and smelled the air as well.
“It must be from the pigs I am holding lately. Are you excited?” He said as he kicked the door open. I did hope he would open the door with his hands, but he probably noticed his vulnerability as well. I grabbed his hand on my shoulder, turned away from him and tried to throw him over me. Usually, this worked incredibly well considering my height, but Aska felt like a rock. He didn’t even budge one bit, but rather stepped to my side and grabbed my neck in one go.
“So, Lucinda. I noticed this bitch sealed off your mind. Would you care to explain what you two discussed?” He asked while slamming me into the strangely durable wooden wall over and over again. I naturally struggled, tried to kick him with all I got, but I knew it would be futile. He usually couldn’t be hurt through normal means and thus, I lost from the start.
“Nothing.” I pressed out as he softened his grip on my neck for a second, only to squeeze tightly again afterwards.
“Nothing … I see. You know that I would never believe you no matter what you said. I am so sorry it has come to this, but I cannot let her mess with my plans. I do hope you understand that. So, where shall we start Lucinda? The good old whipping maybe?” There was no other way to make me talk except through forceful methods. There was just a slight problem I was betting on.
“You don’t have enough time to make a mess out of me.” I would wake up at some point and my soul would leave purgatory this way. No matter what he did to me, he couldn’t break me so fast.
“Is that so? Should I explain time magic to you? It is indeed possible to slow down time if there are no borders. For example, you could accelerate the time on the whole of Solaris by tenfold and nobody would bat an eye as no borders between different times appear. And guess what place I just closed off completely. There are no borders in purgatory to other worlds anymore, the endless stream of souls stop as the end and beginning are blocked off. And now, let´s accelerate the time a little bit. Thousand times? Do you feel any different Lucinda?” He asked and let go of my neck. I slid down the wall and sank to the ground, completely helpless. Everything I was betting on was wrong, there was no way around what was bound to happen.
“That´s the problem with raising a lying bitch.” He grabbed my hair and dragged me towards the middle of the barn towards a large, bloody table, while I thrashed around violently. I frantically searched for any way out of this but found absolutely none. He was adamant about breaking me until I had no other choice but to spill out the truth. The problem was, if I told him the truth now, he wouldn’t believe me. In short, I was too good for him to discern the truth, but not good enough to defend myself against him. I stayed completely silent as he dragged me onto the table and started chaining me to it.
This was how far our love for each other went. And honestly, I couldn’t even blame him for torturing me. It was always a struggle for control between us and as he lost some of it, he desperately tried to regain it, even when it meant that our façade of friendliness and normality we built during all these years would be broken, even when he had to disillusion me this way. I even felt the fragile equality between us crack a little, but refused to admit I wasn’t his equal. Equals tortured each other as well.
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He didn’t stop tormenting me in the past because he didn´t see it as a valid method anymore. He stopped because he didn’t need to anymore. But at this point, this need returned.
“Well, well, well, where do we start?” I would have preferred if he just tickled me quietly. But, no, a hammer and two nails were definitely not meant for tickling. I screamed in pain as he nailed my hand to the table and my hand twitched uncontrollably. Blood flowed out of the wound, even as he heated both nails up and the flesh around it sizzled as it burnt. Swiftly afterwards though, I put up a bored expression again and stared into his eyes.
“You are a control freak.” I claimed while gritting my teeth. Even after all these years, pain was still pain and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
“And so are you. You would do anything to gain just a bit of extra leverage over me, don’t you? Motivating this guy to desire you is such a Lucinda way of dealing with me. You know exactly that he wants to fuck you, and heck, you even want to give him that, just to make me jealous. But the promise you made all these years kind of forbids you from doing so.”
“You … promised me you wouldn’t hurt me anymore.” I said and looked towards my right hand.
“Yeah, I did. But tempting others to force you into sex is also a way of breaking your promise, isn’t it? You shouldn’t have done that … let´s say we are even this way.” Shortly afterwards, he hammered the second nail through my left hand. Once again, I screamed and nearly bit on my tongue as the pain receded. “What should I do with you? You are such a mess, my dear. Finding friends on Solaris, is this supposed to be a joke? We had such a nice goodbye in purgatory, but you had to find your feelings again. Do you think I tortured you for fun all these years, that I liked moulding you into a killer through violence? And this woman, Mary, do you seriously see her as you mum?” I spit in his direction in a last attempt to defy him. It stopped mid-flight, but the message was clear. “A family that you can love and always loves you back, huh? That´s me, I am your family, not this idiotic woman who can´t even see your genius.”
I seriously didn’t understand what he was babbling about in all his rage.
“You know that I don’t see you as my dad.” I said and directly screamed as a dagger was stabbed through my belly. For a short moment, my whole body convulsed involuntarily, until I forced myself to relax again. The pain still clouded my mind quite a lot and I stopped breathing as it hurt to move around.
“And that wasn’t an issue so far until you found a freaking family over there …” He said and moved the dagger by a bit.
“The seed of life … it´s a lie, isn’t it?” I pressed out in excruciating, never-ending pain.
“So she did tell you about that. Yes, it is a lie, but I had to hide the truth.” He claimed and wiggled the dagger around even more.
“And the truth is?” I pressed out between my gnashing teeth.
“That´s still a secret.” He said and left the dagger as it was. My whole belly was cut open at this point, but sadly, it neither healed nor did I fall unconscious. “Care to tell me now what the goddess told you?”
“No…” It was still too early. I have dealt with worse and although it was absolutely not my thing, I had to bear with it for now.