Tales of the Travellers

5

It took a lot of work, but now I had all the heartless time in the world.

I stabbed the stick in the ground and gently readjusted what I was trying to balance on it. Flames still roamed freely, but none dared to come near me. All around me were headless bodies and blood that sparked into fire.

When it balanced I sniffed and stepped back to view my work.

Crosses, several crosses, all make-shifted by me, stood before me. All were dressed in the cloaks of the dead and the fragments of tents, but each had something special hanging from them; heads. Each one had a different head hanging from them.

I took deep breaths as I attempted to wipe the blood from my face and the burns from my hands. I gritted my teeth as I watched them all start to burn and turn into ambers in the night. I glared at the head that stood before me on the biggest cross I had made.

Shadows was a man of a feeble face even in death.

His eyes were nothing more than a gimmick to fright people, me included.

But as I watched his face burn with the flames, I found something almost poetic about it.

Nevertheless, my Rosary found my hand when it dripped down my sleeve as I started laughing. "Can you see me now, God?" I yelled to the sky, the stars were beyond my world as the smoke hid them savagely. "Do I exist to you now?! Do you notice me!? Now am I worth your time?!" I screeched at the top of my lungs. "Is this what it takes?! A man to call upon insanity before the rights of God?" I watched as the fire burned the crosses I had made, and soon the heads that hung on them copied.

"I've given you everything! I let you plot my course and I never questioned it! I never doubted you that one day I may have a happy life," My words were choking in the smoke, but He needed to hear this, I needed to say this to Him. "But how could this be what you planned for me? You promise to give me things that I can handle, but for fucks sake, I'm fourteen! Look at what I've done! Look at what insanity has done to me! My mind! My curse that you've bestowed upon me!" I fell to my knees while I cried, my whole body leaching forwards so I was leaning on my hands and my tears fell to the ground. "You've taken everyone from me! My family! My friends! You've tricked me into killing my kin! I've strayed down the path of revenge and I can't find my way back. I'm trapped in this darkness and you offer me no candle... no light..."

My words were choked and I could hardly continue, but I forced myself to. "Are you listening to me?!" I yelled to the ground. "Why did I have to be made this way?! What did I do to be cursed like this? I don't want to be like this, you know this because you're Him. You know what my limitations are, you know what I am capable of so why... why did you let this happen to me? What did I do to deserve that...?" I was crying again, my words nothing more than splutters. "Punish me, Lord... For I have committed a selfish act, one that can never be forgiven. I had murdered at the order of another, and in the end caused my mind to snap..."

I knocked my head against the ground as I tried not to let those swirling dark things consume me. "Send me something to punish me, Lord. Send me something to prove that you are really there... that all my life I haven't just been lying to myself praying to some soulless entity!" I lifted my head and glared at the flames that reflected off my eyes, "Send me something to kill me to prove you exist and are ready to take action for what you've created!" I was too angry to contain my mind as things were sent flying around everywhere, creating low orbit shooting stars and knocking over crumbling things I had already made.

But exhaustion managed to find me as my arms gave out and I hit the ground with my shoulder. I laid there, never blinking, never really falling asleep, but too tired to make any effort of movement. My mind continued to race, which most likely caused exhaustion.