DEVILS ? C. G. 〖 #wattys2018 〗

WARNING: GRIZZLY DESCRIPTIONS OF PUKE/VOMIT

SOTC: November Rain — Guns N' Roses
• it's hard to hold a candle / in the cold november rain •

He couldn't count anymore. Couldn't count the hours, the meals, the brown spatters of puke in the hallways. He couldn't count the amount of times the blood from his eye webbed down his cheeks and his neck and spread across the collar of his Sanctuary-issued sweatshirt. He clutched the hem between his shaky fingers and pressed it to his face.

A mangling of blood and dirt and pilled beige fabric, the orange 'F' faded to a dull echo. He couldn't count the amount of times he'd cried, and he'd cried, and he'd thought about home and all the people who he'd left.

It never got better. He never could steel himself. The swill of his words and his agony would die here, among the repugnant stench of vomit.

He could smell it. He could smell it. It was crazy, even to him. But as long as he could feel the burning in his nose, bile rising, he was alive. He used his fingernail to split open a cut on his arm, and blood bubbled out like water. 

He feared the simplicity of giving up.

He was alive. He was alive. He was alive.

He wasn't allowed to talk anymore, or even to look at anyone. Not with the other prisoners, not to the guards. He believed that this is what created the torment, a hopelessness worming into eyes.

Vacant. Sun glinting through pupils and not registering, never looking away.

There had been no beginning. There had been no time when he was okay, only the perpetual cycle of work, eat, doze. He couldn't remember the last time he spoke a word. He relieved himself in a hole in the ground near the back, where the guards sent all the prisoners. Sometimes there was another man there. They never looked at each other. They never acknowledged each others' presences.

Working these jobs was reserved for the lowest of the low—people who Saviors won't mind hurting or even killing. Wrangling walkers into chains and harnesses, like cattle.

He once saw a face he thought he recognized, he looked up and let his unfocused eye linger for too many moments. A guard struck the back of his head with his gun, hurtling Carl to the floor.

His head filled with a warm fuzz. He lifted his hands to where he could see them, little yellow pieces of human vomit stuck to his dirty skin. A drop of blood from his socket, caught on the floor in a smooth ruby globe.

He almost passed out. He got up from the ground and tried not to stagger. He kept walking. He kept walking.

The walker's eye bulged out of its head like a bright, purulent growth. Drapes of blood hung from every orifice, every gash upon its mangled skin, flashing as sunlight detailed the serrations. Glittery—a congregation of maggots drunk on spongy white curds of fat.

His palms grew sweaty as they clenched around the pole, his skull seeming to split from its brain as he struggled to stay solid, struggled to stop staring at the walker lumbering towards him. He poked its middle with the wooden pole, keeping it back. It felt as if he was baiting a copperhead.

What was this walker's name? He couldn't imagine it human. Its face was so disfigured. He guessed the same could be said about himself.

His father's face flickered into his mind. He let a twitch of emotion onto his face, then brought himself back into solidarity. He stared at the walker, it reached for him with its long arms.

He impaled the monster with the pole, through the stomach. Flesh opened like a flower around the wound. He stuck the walker-kebab into the dirt.

He looked up, forward, at the walker and its milky eye. It rasped, swung at him, oblivious to its body pinned to the pole.

He swung his gaze around, at the muted colors of prisoners around him. And he couldn't see much with his singular eye, but he could see the blood, and the movement, and the soft blurs of walkers reaching, fingers reaching—

His breath fell. He dropped his hands. He could see the fence from here, the chicken wire from prison came into focus, the fences and metal wires of Terminus.

It was fire all around him and yellow dirt tracked over his legs. He remembered the stench—smoke, running, burning hair—the movement of screams across air.

The ground met his hands. He retched, pulled last night's dog food from his stomach and splattered it all over the dirt.

The air choked him until he was purple, his vision was a discolored river, he was hyperventilating—

He fell sideways. Brought his knees to his chest. Let himself sob, let himself close his eye to the hell he was surrounded by.

He wanted April back. He wanted his father back, wanted to see his eyes, feel his hands like they weren't a hallucination.

He was scared of hallucinations. He was scared of death.

A horrible sound tore out of him. He couldn't breathe.

He wanted to burrow into this dirt and live under the earth. He wanted to bury his other eye.

And yet it burned. It bloomed from his weary fists, a bright red flower, a needle.

These devils, they would never leave.

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QOTD: Have you read Turtles All The Way Down by John Green?

AOTD: fuck yeah I did it was so good it's probably my new favorite JG book (which is saying a lot since I've read literally all of them)

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NEXT CHAPTER:
Friday, October 27, 2017 (probably)

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Word Count: 994
Created 10-20-17