To Kiss A Corpse Goodbye

17 - 𝐅𝐑𝐔𝐈𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐎𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐄

Mankind could never imagine something existing without an end to it. Maybe it was a reflection of mortality– after all, that which could not exist forever could sparsely comprehend that which could even scrape eternity. In the human existence, everything had to be mortal. Otherwise, it could not be understood.

An empire must fall, a god must die, a love must end, a rapture must come, an extinction must claim all mankind, legacies must crumble to ash in the blowing wind, and the universe must eventually die. The vast expanses of time could only be understood in three phases by the human mind. Creation, the middling, and the finality. No matter what other times, those times were the skeleton upon which all the rest of human understanding stood. The middling was where everything happened, but it was the least romantic of them all, so it was little spoken of. People were always worried about finality.

She had grown up hearing complaints of social decay her whole life. In more recent years, she had heard talk of sinks which would lead to behavioural issues and something about homosexual rats her entire life. She pitied the poor handymen, who must have had a terrible trouble explaining that there was no relation between sink styles and sexuality.

She had listened to speakers go on and on about how the behaviour of the people was turning to no more than social deviancy, which would slowly destroy all mankind. A speech repeated a thousand times, on every street corner, radio show, and film. Sometimes it felt as though people were cheering for it. Begging for the decay of mankind to come and destroy everything. Begging for a punishment for all those they did not approve of being alive. People had even tried.

Adelaide's world was just about at its end now. Not in the literal sense. There were still nations out there which had yet to be bombed and which were standing gingerly, preparing ways to fight against the radiation poisoning that would come through wind and water. Adelaide however, was about to die in a much more literal way. Chunks of her skin had slipped off in the night while she attempted to rest, and she'd once again split off from Rainmaker. She was fairly certain she'd run into him again, but she wanted to just get some distance either way.

When he was close by, she understood that his presence contributed to the 'middling'. It trapped her near the end of the middle, and only reminded her further of the inevitable end. Besides, she felt it was better to stay lonely. If she wanted to redeem herself through death, it would've been best to make sure the circumstances leading to the death were less pleasant. Things gone as miserable as possible.

She had a theory about the world, a fourth stage all people understood. Slotted between the middling and the finality. Dying. The slow decay while still technically breathing. That was what she considered to be her stage in life. Her marriage had failed spectacularly. Her only remaining friend was long gone. The only companion she had was a boy too young for her to invest in. Her body was crumbling. She wasn't yet dead, but she was dying. And at this edge of her life, her head was simply full of maggots.

Adelaide had to admit to herself that she had run from Rainmaker on purpose. To not have to invest more into him. To not have to care for him, when there was some part of her desperate to. Some part of her that wanted to treat him as the son Jisako had always wanted to have. The son Jisako would never be able to have because of Adelaide herself.

She had been legging it so long and so far that she didn't recognize the language the few leftover signs were written in, and could barely understand the ghosts which haunted the areas around. The words as written were in a similar looking alphabet to her own, but nothing looked sensical, and when the ghosts spoke, they did so in a cadence that sounded nothing like one she had ever known. The demons she killed spoke in some foreign tongue she didn't quite recognize. It wasn't as if they couldn't speak hers, but they had given themselves to conduits who only knew their own.