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misery—drab walls renewed themselves in thick sheaves of
liquescent wood rot and scuttling vermin, and so the temple
to depression blossomed like a blackened meadow filled with
burned flowers, strong with the scent of smoldering beauty.
In the distance, far above me, I could hear the construction
of a new room, a live-born space of specific horror—my
horror, where the blood of my new family outlined the
places where I had slain them. Where I had eaten them.
The room retreated from me—I was a spent morsel,
a husk. Perhaps I’d always been empty, I was forced to
consider, and had only just nursed a void. Over the course
of my many and sundry battles, I’d been struck by monsters
and gods alike, and kept my feet—but never had any blow
diminished me so thoroughly as the memory which now
stood revealed. I collapsed to the ground. And for my
troubles, the apartment house mimicked the sounds it had
plucked from my ultimate sadness, no doubt the equivalent
of turning a canteen upside-down—an attempt to coax one
last drop of nourishment from its hiding place. A terrible
memory came spilling from without my overturned mind—
of the time when I took them all from the world:
They could vanish from sight within an empty white
room, sever the spine of a charging razorback in seconds,
scale a wall like scuttling spiders—my sisters were, in every
pore of their souls, hunters. That night beneath the storm and
darkness of night, we played one last game together, with
knives and smiles and blood and death. It was our mother’s
wish that we do so. It was necessary, and we understood
why.
I remember when they tricked me into that attic, with
vanishing footfalls and feigns aplenty, their abrupt laughter
coming from impossible places, knives sliding across my
skin like bladed breaths. The tiny room seemed to shrink,
closing in on me, denying me the use of my strength. When
the door closed from behind, they were upon me. Their speed
was inhuman, moving over and across me with their blades
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