...and God shuffled his Feet



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“Can’t you leave me alone?”

Run run run you weak little bastard

“Can’t you just leave ME?”

Don’t fall just run run run you puny excuse for a human

“Can’t you just LEAVE ME?”

One foot in front of the other step step step run run run you worthless Host?

His knee hits the floor, the fabric of his jeans tearing from the impact. He doesn’t feel the pain. Get up get up get up! He’s up and running again. He doesn’t see. He knows he can’t fight it, yet he’s trying to resist, trying to withstand the urge and the adrenaline his body is running on. His feet drag him to somewhere he’s never been before and his knee is hurting, but he doesn’t feel it, he can’t feel it.

There’s only one thing he feels.

Excitement.

He’s there. He’s coming back.

He doesn’t want it to happen. His lips are moving, he’s talking, but he doesn’t register the words that come out. What is he saying? Does he really want to be left alone? He’s been alone his entire life, he’s never been a part of anything, not even of Yuugi’s circle of friends, no matter how much they claimed he was.

Pharaoh doesn’t care for you. Pharaoh kills you if he gets the chance.

“No! No!”

His breathing is ragged, his chest is heaving from the exertion. He’s never been good at any physical exercise. Karita-sensei wasn’t the first victim, and certainly not the last, to have his soul sealed into a lead figurine - his friends, his family, his teachers, all gone all gone all dead and gone and dead…

But I have always been there for you.

“I don’t care! Leave me alone!”

Useless. He’s screaming, he’s yelling, and if there are people on the street at this time of night, they would scurry away for the frantically running boy, bonewhite hair flaring, eyes wild and darting back and forth, a ghost in clothes, sweeping the pavement.

“Leave me… leave me…”

A hollow snicker, somewhere in the back of his mind. It’s confusing and distorting his thoughts. He can’t keep track of what is going on, of what his thoughts are, or what his thoughts are. Voices…one voice. Always the same voice.

The abandoned church looks out of place, and he doesn’t recall ever seeing it before. It doesn’t fit in the architecturial style of the modern city - it looks ancient, quaint, and he doesn’t understand why he’s running towards it.

Looking for salvation? From me?

He opens the doors, expecting them to be heavy. He all but stumbles into the church; a ghastly silence greets him. The occult holds no secrets, and he’s used to darkness all his life. Again this feeling of comfort, of warmth in this eerilie empty church. He walks down the aisle, marveling, reveling in the silence - he’s safe.

No one has been here in what seems like forever. The pews are covered in thick layers of dust, the windows are smudged and blurry, and he can see his footsteps, neatly printed in the dirt. There’s no one here. Even the voice in his head has stopped talking.

Wrapping his arms around him, it’s as cold as it is silent, he continues to walk down the aisle. Religion has never played a part in his life, and he can’t understand why he has run to a church. He doesn’t believe in any deity, is he really expecting to find comfort and solace in an empty, abandonded, ice cold church?

“I don’t want any part of it,” he says out loud and he scares himself with the loudness of his own voice. No answer. Silence.

The altar is devoid of any paraphernalia. Dust and cobwebs are its only decoration. He walks towards it, swaying like a drunk.

Do you still think they will come to rescue you?

His first reaction is to turn around, to snap his head around, expecting someone behind him. The voice sounds like it belongs to someone, anyone who could walk beside him. Silly, stupid, of course there’s no one else in the church, and there’s no one behind him. He’s been running the entire night, and he has no coat with him. Another shiver, and a faint sound catches his attention; to his utter surprise, the candles on both sides of the altar are burning.

They weren’t burning when he entered. He stands still, his body frozen up in fear. Adrenaline is rushing through him. Excitement. Why isn’t he feeling fear, yes he is feeling fear, but why isn’t it overtaking his mind and soul? Why is there excitement, why is heat rushing through his body, despite standing still? It’s him. He doesn’t want him, and yet he’s begging for him.

“I don’t care… leave me alone..!” He repeats, but there’s no vehemence in his voice. A tear wells up in he corner of his eye. He’s scared. He thought the other was gone. He doesn’t even have the pendant anymore. Yuugi had it.

The eighth key is in the Pharaoh’s memories. We need that key. Without it, we can’t open the Gates of Hell. You still have a mission.

“We? WE?” He yells, the high pitch in his voice hurting his ears. “Mission? What mission?”

For a moment, he thinks the voice is silent again, but there’s still a noise ringing in his ears. It’s his own voice, still screaming, still crying out in disgust and in surprise, in longing and in fear…it takes him a moment to realize it’s not the sound of a voice, but the sound of an organ.

He wants to fight, but his body is locked up, and he can’t even clench his fist. His life…what about his life? He has felt so much pain. So much sadness, so much loneliness. All his life he tried to make friends, to belong to a family, to be who he wanted to be. His mother is gone. His sister is gone. His father his gone. His friends…

“I have always been there for you.”

A solid voice, dancing to the tone of the increasing organ music, slowly but surely swelling. A solid hand on his shoulder and his heart skips a beat, and he gasps. He doesn’t look around. He doesn’t dare to look around.

…God?

“Is that how you think of me?” A whisper in his ear, a gust of breath caressing the strands of his hair. Caressing? Gentleness was the last thing he expects to find here. His heart is beating loudly, his body is refusing to answer his commands, and he frantically inhales and exhales.

“N…no,” he answers.

A chuckle. The music intensifies. This organ…it makes him feel weak. It’s almost as if it nails him to this spot, hypnotizing his senses. Wasn’t there organ music at the funeral of… another gasp, as firm hands press on his shoulders, forcing him down. His knees buckle and he collapses, onto the cold, dusty church floor.

For whatever it’s worth, the brusque movement snaps him out of his trance, and he starts to fight. He moves his arms in an attempt to elbow the person behind him, but he touches nothing but air. Suffocating air, dust whirls up and clogs his nose and throat, and he coughs wildly. Louder, louder, the organ is still playing, the candles are still burning, he can feel the heat from their tiny flames. It’s surreal, and he doesn’t want it to happen. That voice had taken too much of him already. He always allowed others to use him. All he wanted, was his life to himself.

“Beautiful life,” the voice resonates through the church, with its common sarcasm. “Humans value life so much, as if it was God’s gift. There is no God. You should know that. You should know what you are, and what I am.”

“I don’t care!” He wants to spit it into the other’s face, but he can’t see him. He can’t see anything, as clouds of dust hinder his vision. His next cry is smothered, as his face is being pressed to the cold floor. He can’t identify the weight on his back and shoulders and protests, coughing and wheezing.

The voice in his head is gone, transported outside his mind, taken the shape of a living person - or so he thinks, because the weight on him feels physical, and the voice whispering into his ear sounds real enough, even though he can’t see the other’s face, can’t the other’s arms or legs. Yet he’s in a kneeling position, in the middle of the church aisle, facing the empty altar.

He shivers, but it’s not from the cold. His mind holds too many thoughts to sift through, too many fears and worries and hopes and dreams and nightmares. His hair has turned grey from the abundance of dust, and his pale skin shows goosebumps as it’s exposed. The fingers on his body aren’t warm. They’re bony, long and small, and they trail along his spine as a spider, traipsing lower and lower.

He should be fighting. He should be screaming. There’s no one here, no one can hear him. No one would come to save him. He’s been a slave his entire life. A slave to circumstances he couldn’t control, a slave to circumstances he couldn’t influence, a slave to a personality that was stronger than his.

He doesn’t even cry. He doesn’t want to cry. Somewhere, deep down, he feels happy. Happy that he’s not alone anymore. Honored perhaps, a sick, twisted sense of honor to be the chosen one for this personality. It’s all right. The excitement returns, as if he’s celebrating the return of his best friend.

“The answer to your question,” the voice says and more of his skin is exposed, and the shiver down his spine is not from the spider-like fingers but from the intense, gutwrenching dark tones coming from the organ, “is no.”

No.

No.

No.


He starts to scream at the same time the church windows shatter into a million pieces and the glass rains down on his skin, cutting his sensitive flesh. The organ is still playing and there’s laughter ringing in his ears, and pain is there, all over his body, cold, wet and harsh pain, and he finally clenches his fists.

He still screams, no, the answer is not no, no, there aren’t any answers, no to the personality possessing him, no to the voice dancing around in his mind again, no to the body on top of his whose face he can’t see, no to the intrusion, no to the violation.

He has no choice but to take it. He has always been standing on the sidelines. He had to take what life threw at him, what God or gods threw at him, if he believed in it. His body responds, shame mixing with embarrassment mixing with excitement, and his legs tremble, but not from pain. He arches his back and a fingers tangle in his hair, lifting his face up from the dusty floor.

All he wanted, is gone. Unimportant. He’s acquiescing to what’s happening to him, and he finds no resistance. Not within himself, not within his body. Sensations coil in his stomach, his cheeks sporting a reddish color as he realizes how naked, how vulnerable he is. He also realizes how the other uses it for his own means, and it should infuriate him, how the other uses him with a confidence as if he belongs to him.

It ends just as abruptly as it started. The heat, the intrusion is gone. He lies in the middle of the church aisle, covered in shards of glass. The organ is silent, and a gust of cold evening wind caresses his bare skin. He’s exposed from the waist down, but there is no one here to see it. No one. He tries to move, muscles protesting, as he reaches for his clothes. There’s something…between his legs, sticking to his thighs, and he feels disgust and happiness at the same time.

“Are you there?” He asks.

I’ve always been here.

The immediate answer soothes him. A smile tugs at the corners of his lips as he finishes dressing himself up again, moving around like an old man, every movement slow and painful. He cuts himself on the glass, but just as with his knee, he doesn’t feel it. He often takes the pain for him. It’s like a friend, a partner, who has left for a holiday and who has now returned.

He takes him, with everything that he has. Hope, despair, happiness, fear and joy.

He can’t leave him.

And neither can he.

Shivering from the cold, the candles blown out by the wind, he drags himself to the doors again, shuffling his feet.

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