The Devil's Guard Dog

Epilogue

It was strange, the feeling of dying. The blood leaking out of my body, the coldness of the ground, the ringing in my head and the veil over my eyes. So many words to describe it, yet not a single one to encompass the entirety of the experience. Such fragile and simple beings humans are, and yet, they fear this inevitability of living. They all come to the end of the road at some point, no path taken leads to a different destination, so why fear it? Why was I fearing it?

Such strange and intangible questions to a new experience that I couldn’t so much explain, let alone understand. And yet, it was still happening. This body was failing, and I couldn’t stop that. I didn’t have to fear what was waiting for me, I knew all too well where I would go in the expanse of the universe, however I feared leaving this world behind. It was such a hated and forced state of existence, yet I yearned to learn more about it. Emotion, physical feeling, all crude translations of a state of being, so why did I want to keep it so badly?

I didn’t know, maybe it was the simple fact that I didn’t have all the answers that made me want it, maybe it was the unknown answers to those questions that made “life” worth fighting for. Fighting for answers in an uncertain world, or fighting to find more questions. For something so simple, it was a complex fabric that kept me intrigued with its simplicity. In a way, the dark and light of all this in a physical form was very similar to how I used to be, yet all the more different. Like a tapestry, painted with the same colors, but interpreted through the eyes of a different artist.

I had to wonder how Fletcher interpreted my kind, where I saw energy, maybe he saw something different. Maybe it was something that invoked emotion, like it had when he met me. Maybe that emotion fueled what he saw, or maybe what he saw was what we all actually were and elicited that emotion, who’s to say.

Maybe no one individual saw the same thing, maybe what one sees as blue is really red through their eyes. Maybe each interpretation is an entirely different universe we have yet to discover, just waiting for us to experience it.

I think that’s why I went back to him. I wanted that tangible reality back, because through all the questions he had for me, I had at least a thousand more for him. I wanted to learn, learn about this world through simpler eyes. I fought off death, kept this body alive, and although I could have gone anywhere I wanted, I couldn’t leave that aspect behind me.

I tried to, I tried to experience it all, but in that time, I only felt more lost the further I explored my own existence. This world was alien to me, and I felt as though he was the only one who could even come close to my reality, and guide me through this one.

The cult brought me here, and I experienced what they would call hate for the first time. However they also brought me Fletcher, and he helped me understand so much more than just my own emotional distress. Maybe this was supposed to happen, or maybe it wasn’t, such a strange set of circumstances playing into one another to bring me to this world.

Maybe, just maybe, like in my world, this was the contrast. It was the light to the darkness I was dragged through. Giving me life could have been the outcome of torture, giving me this opportunity could have been the result of pain. Maybe it was just meant to help me understand their versions of good and evil.

I spent many days walking the streets, watching the sun rise and fall, seeing the interactions between humans, both good and bad. I felt cold snow on my face, saw the sky bloom in rays of color and explode in an unknown number of stars, tasted smoke floating in the air, and smelt the damp evanescence of ozone after rain fall. Life, for all it was, all I could experience, was beautiful.

The Cult of the Dead Sun was a fleeting organization, that much I knew. They would take criminals at first because their souls were dark, and they believed that would give them access to the darkness. They understood the “yin and yang,” however they never could grasp the meaning of it. You need darkness to understand, not to use. If you become that darkness, then you only snuff out the light, bar your path to it. Darkness doesn’t overcome darkness; it only adds to it. Light within the darkness shines brightest, because it’s the light that needs to be seen. They began corrupting innocent people because of this, however they never realized they were only adding to the darkness within themselves. I suppose, in a more human way of saying it, two wrongs never make a right.

They failed because they snuffed themselves out, they died because they were consumed. This is why you look for the light to understand the darkness, and you look to the darkness to understand the light. You look for the bad and good flaws in the picture to know how it was truly made.

Still, the cycle keeps going, the world keeps turning, and the universe keeps growing. They were only a side piece to something far greater. And as I sit here, at the beginning of it all, I think I’m going to enjoy sticking around for a little while.

I’m going to be meeting with Fletcher soon, and maybe he’ll have the answers to my questions. It has been a very long time for him, and in that time, I couldn’t help but miss him. I want to learn so much more, and this time, I’ll be the one asking the stupid questions.