Fodah

[The Sixth Circle of Hell, Fraud, Fodah]

Stories of criminals who live in luxury and goodwill, stories of glorious men who had deceived the masses and turned them against each other, and even governments who have flirted with tyranny are par for the course, as all of them repeat the same mistake of defining themselves as heroes by their neighbours and not in their eyes. At the same time, every story in every book contains one of each sin, or just a slight variation. All these stories even have a moral. But none tell the most important point of all; they are just stories. 

They were frauds in the eye of reality, I was taught. 

In our lives, we all commit a sin, atleast once, whether it be as grave as the sin of wrath, as meaningless as the sin of vanity, or as menial as the sin of ignorance. And what does it take to repent? It's simple.

We need to accept that we are sinners in the eyes of reality, and realize the distance between the integrity and the ethics that we work so hard to uphold, and the level of integrity we actually need to have in order to act in accordance with the ethics. However, once we do, we reach such a high stage of personal happiness, that we sin, again, repeating the cycle, such as is the nature of us. 

The words echoed in my mind, as I walked through a hallway in this dilapidated temple. The voice didn't match its owner, who was staring at me. Its eyes though, we not eyes, but eels, and its head was shaped... like a bow. It had a human body, but I wasn't sure if you could call this thing human. Its mouth was bleeding as it laughed.

It laughed.

It laughed loudly.

The more it laughed, the more it bled.

"I... I HAVE A BODY!!!"

It bled even worse now that it spoke. "Hahahahahahahaha! You were right! YOU WERE ALWAYS RIGHT!!! I HAVE AN IDENTITY, DO I NOT?"

It screamed. It was trembling in what seemed to be a mixture of pain and joy, though I couldn't be sure.

It almost seemed to be a contradiction.

"AaAAAAAAAGH!!!"

It was tearing its eel-like eyes out; but it smiled more and more. 

"This blood... so good!! I haven't been real till now!!! I DIDN'T LIVE! Hahahahahahahaha!! YES!! I WAS A FALSE LESSON, A SOFT ASSESSMENT THAT DOES NOT LIVE!!! BUT NOW, I CAN EXIST!"

It was like watching a lunatic roar about the emptiness of the universe.

It was a crazy scene, and I was frozen in fear.

Then, it looked at me with those holes, and suddenly, the silence was so ear piercing that I almost screamed. I stared back at it. I never knew it, but I was seeing the emotion that was clearly visible on its face.

Hatred? 

It suddenly sprang up, with the eels now all inside its body. It took me by surprise as its body began to disintegrate, and soon, it was completely nothing, lying on the floor like a pile of paper.

I was panting now.

I was alone.

I thought I was dreaming for a second.

But then, I remembered, after all. I was still there in that deserted temple.

I left the temple, only to see the outside be but a giant bowl of the color white.

I stepped outside, and no one looked the same. 

One man had his head shaped like a snake, and his body was nothing but a collection of bone pieces that seemed to be trying to reach his head. Barely held together by the pieces, the head itself had seemed to have disappeared in a moment. A sickly yellow light had been taken out of it.

I saw another man. His head was made of bits of metal. There seemed to be teeth stuck in it, or perhaps more were never there in the first place. He moved painfully slow, as if the movement itself spoke torment into his body.

There were others, and each of them seemed abominable.

Each one of them.

Only a shadow was all that was left of them, and a flock of ravens that watched over them, patiently waiting for their next opportunity to feast on the remains of what was once human.

I looked down at my hands as my legs began to falter under my weight. I saw a seething darkness that seemed to be eating up my shadow, making it seem as if I wasn't really there. My head was cloudy. I forgot where I was going.

I fell to my knees.

I couldn't do it for much longer.

What was I? 

This very moment, I just couldn't tell.

My body was bleeding, and a dark shadow was flowing out of me. I was on the verge of death, and I knew it. 

My body had become something else; something I didn't quite remember.

The worst of it was, I was so scared. I couldn't remember how I had gotten to this point. All I knew was, it was just so sudden. I wanted to cry. 

I saw the temple in front of me. There was still no one.

I stared at it with eyes. Eyes that had become monsterous holes.

The temple had transformed into a giant mirror, but there was nothing within my reflection, nothing but an empty body.

The ravens had finally gotten the hint that I was about to die. I could feel them all flying in a circle above me, not much far from where I was, watching over me.

And then, as I gave up myself, the ravens ate into my reflection, tearing my flesh as they could, leaving behind a gigantic hole in it, as if I was hollow to begin with.