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Hunger. Hunger. Hunger. Hunger. I look at the sky and see ripples of water. Pale sun. Let it hide. AND LET THIS DAMNED GLOOM DROWN.
Cannot call it emptiness, that which leaves something inside. Something vile.
Listen not to yourself, hear the silence around. Fill your ears with water and the measured sound of rising air. Of fins. It will get easier. Any moment now.
Hunger is stronger than death. It brings pain and no peace. I feel my own grinding, something obstructs inside my throat, pulls the muscles under my tongue, cramps my jaw, aches in my temples. The protruding knuckles behind my ears want to surrender to black waters, dissolve my thoughts. Heavy, cloying smell, giving off metal on the tongue. Settles, flows like ink inside, binds the voice and prevents breathing.
Not the hunger that torments mortals, calling to the stomach in search of dead food, not that which torments beasts, gnashing their teeth. It tears at the throat, gnaws at me, my pathetic rotting flesh from within. It demands bread. It demands judgment. Better to devour sand, tearing it from the bottom with dirty hands, than to sink under the master of water, to be silent and feel pity for myself in oblivion, instead of breaking his bones, taking his lands and opening the dark waters only to the corpses of his esteemed worshippers! To drown! To swallow ships in insatiable decadence. And not to forget. Never.
Under water the sun's light hardly blinds. In dark stone that keeps my bones, the rays won't find. The cold will feed and warm the loneliness.
Sometimes I want to lie down and never get up. Burrow deep into foul-smelling silt, its stench will pass as soon as you give yourself to the cold. To become clay myself. To grow numb. In the pressing comfort of wet earth's peace. Endlessly decaying by water. But to give myself.... Uninteresting. It interferes with plans. Interferes with respect for my own eternity. Scholarship.
Black shadow. Small. Hum. The water's salt corrodes the mucous membrane. I look. How pleasant to no longer know what burns the eyes. The South is full of water.
A sailor's soul, a merchant's soul, a lost noble lord's soul. All equal before me. And all will be swallowed by the sea's abyss. Exquisite delicacy of fleeting sweetness. Their bitterness, their regrets. They are so alike, but so insignificant in comparison....
They taste of nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I swallow and swallow and the hollow stays. Grows. A sailor's soul tastes of salt and terror. A merchant's of greed thinly veiled. A noble's of perfume covering the rot underneath. I consume them all and feel nothing but the gnawing emptiness expanding in my chest, in my throat, behind my eyes.
Satiation never comes. Never comes.
Thirst. Thirst for dry salted water, thirst for his tears, which I hope to drink. I am demise. I am the demise he will suffer. He'll forget life, he'll forget death, but will remember my name. He dares not forget it.
I was deprived of water, I was deprived of food, I want to tear into their flesh, I will rip apart this hateful body. I will drink his hope. I will hear the screams and myself will be the funeral song. He will answer me. He will beg. He will stand on his knees. For so long. For so long I humiliated myself before another's fate. For so long I held debts not for my own soul. I so. I so want....
The silence is so full that I feel it densely, under my fingers. Good. And yet hungry. Eternally and immeasurably hungry. Silently. And I cannot breathe. Are lungs necessary in one's own death? Will I be able to devour this meat, tearing it from my own sternum? It is unexpectedly thin. I feel ribs under my fingers. Is a tongue needed by one who lies under water? Eyes for one who keeps himself in darkness? Are hands needed by one whom failure smiled upon every time he wanted to take something?
IS A HEAD ON THE SHOULDERS NEEDED BY A TYRANT?!
Hatred gives life, and I will revel in it. Swallow to the bottom until I exhaust every drop. Until they pay. I will break their spirit. I will eat his dreams, which will still smolder in his rotting, dank heart.
Once I was called otherwise....
All my life I served nobility. All my life I tried, tried.... And earned burial in stuffiness, in blackening darkness and screams....
The screams never stop. Even underwater. Especially underwater. Mother's voice calling my name. Sister's laughter cutting off. Father's hands reaching, reaching, reaching and finding nothing.
I drowned.
The darkness gives rest. It doesn't touch, doesn't call, doesn't scream.
He speaks. They! Speak so much. He doesn't think to dare be silent, burns with words and glows. Sings of hope, of light, he speaks words of love, of devotion. Of the joy of his days. Of friendship. He doesn't care.... I would tear out that tongue! He came so close that I see the soul in his eyes. I hope this meaningless chatter amuses him, as their noble goals will amuse me.
He.... I want to understand where the rain takes its luck from. I borrow it. Envy.... Where to run, what to say, how to see?! To take what's mine back for myself.... He doesn't look into the darkness, he fears it. He looks at the sky and waits. I think it's hope. If I eat it, he won't forgive me. But how else can I feel not only the consuming bitterness? How to remember not only thirst?
Hope tastes sweet. Like overripe fruit left to ferment in the sun. It sticks to the throat. Makes me want to vomit. But I swallow it anyway. Again. And again. And again. Until the sweetness turns to ash and even that feels like something.
I will bury your hopes in the Southern Sea. They will be flooded with hopelessness, and they will no longer show themselves to the shores.
He! He is so proud, but I hearken and see only his pride. He stands so close, but doesn't even see my face. His face. Stained with my blood. That's how I see from below, from the dust, from tangled black hair that covers my eyes. This burnt smell seems to me. The screams seem to me! THE WHISPER SEEMS TO ME! Can't see.... His steps never trod through dirt. Tyrant. Windbag. So many coins those palms held. I will strangle this contemptible face. With the last thing left in my will.
His hands were clean. Always clean. Divine hands. Hands that never scraped through mud looking for a coin to buy moldy rice. Hands that never clutched at empty air where a family should be. Hands that weighed contracts with golden scales while mine were bound, weighted, sinking.
I waited so long. Broken, painful, futile. Soul. Darkens over the water.
I will crush your divine power and destroy your ideals. I will erase even the memory of you.
I so thirst to drown myself....