𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐎𝐋𝐔𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘𝐋𝐀𝐌𝐁 | dazai osamu

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE REVOLUTION OF MARYLAMB

XX

As all good things come to an end, your time with Dazai flutters shut, like a chapter of a book coming to a graceful, happy ending. You return back to University, and Dazai continues to work under the Armed Detective Agency. You take your exams, scratch your head at the diagrams printed on the exam papers, go home, eat, watch TV, write in your journal, and go to sleep with the thought of Dazai Osamu in your mind.

You were sure he was thinking of you too.

But the corruption had already begun to fester within you. Or maybe the evil had been there all along, like the snake was in the Garden of Eden. But snakes were holy too—were they not a creature of God, an animal amongst the choir of his creations? They say God punished the snake by giving it no legs for tricking Eve. But for what? It had done nothing. Eve was simply greedy, because she was feminine, as all feral women are: And feral were the two first human beings to walk this Earth. She had simply eaten the fruit, meaning to leave the garden, because the fruit speaks of other things, other longings. Longings that you have begun to understand. Viciously did it run through your system like a rapidly spreading cancer: Something you were well reversed in. Lung cancer is the most common cancer in both men and women: the cells travel there often from where they first mutated. Blood flushes through your veins and capillaries, blood that has been made within the biologically, darkest part of yourself: The bone marrow. Deep in your bones, where nothing shone, only softness, as fresh veal does in its crate.

It was made evident that you had changed when you returned back home for the Winter break, after your exams, where your ascetic parents waited for you with arms crossed and a strange look in their eyes that you finally understood: Judgement.

They recognized you as the problem now: You were the black sleep. The black lamb. Corruption as black, purity as white: Why was it that corruption was black? Was it because it was like a cloak, encompassing everything into nothingness in its arms? White exposes, and shouldn't that be condemned?

"You've changed," Mother says when you walk through the door, bringing your suitcase in and dusting it off of snow. You look up from slipping your shoes off and into her dark eyes, darkly bruised with beatings that her mother had given her in an attempt to beat the sin out of her; sins that were never committed, but bestowed upon for simply being a woman. She hadn't beaten you as a kid; she had no nerves for it. She usually left that to your father. And even he couldn't put a hand on you. They would simply roar at you inside, words acting like lashes to your delicate skin, leaving behind scars that could never heal. Scars that was a massive character betrayal: Scars that God has looked away from because he can simply turn the other way. They lacked the ruthlessness the older generations had. "I can smell it."

"It must be my new perfume," You nervously reply. "I bought a new one."

"No," She insists, and watches you carefully as you take off your coat and hang it on a peg. "You've changed. Something about you is off."

"Maybe it's because of the things I'm learning," You finally confess, taking a seat on the living room couch. "Mother, I've been studying the neuroscience unit. And where does biology, religion, morality, literature, and philosophy come together? Everything seems dry as bone; and what you've taught me doesn't answer my questions."

"Do we live by sight, or by faith? 2 Corinthians 5:7. I thought we've taught you this when you were a little girl," She sternly responds. You lean forwards, unknowingly eyes glittering, and voice filled with a promise of all secrets unravelling before her, like a magician turning his pockets inside out at the TSA.