Fear the Old Blood
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Agitation makes everything else seem so trite in comparison. The quivering of the heart never felt so much like an earthquake as it did in the face of overwhelming fury -- that was what it was, unrelenting, like a dam had burst from within him and opened up. The years had not treated him well enough to do any more than let it get all pent up in him. Up until now. Something rotten found its way stuck in his teeth, and his solution was to keep tearing away with all he had; every second not spent pulling this overgrown teratoma apart piece by piece was a second wasted on his part, and he wasn't going to let this moment get away from him. The poison in its veins sprayed through the air like if you had stepped on a water hose. It gushed out, burned clean through concrete, and eventually the swirl came to a halt, along with the sawblade which stuck itself solid into the mess of feathers and acid. The hands that held it were little more than stumps anymore, and by the time he realized this, his grip had failed him, and he could do no more but to fall and look upon the creature with bewilderment. If you took all the pollution out from the atmosphere, the smog, the fluorescent lights, even the clouds, and left only the pure black sky littered with stars, Earth's miniscule view of the cosmos would be nothing but meager in comparison to the shimmer that split up her chest. He could never hope to match it, nothing in the whole history of mankind could ever hope to overcome it, all human understanding couldn't put a word to it; he could try a dozen different times and the outcome wouldn't change, nor would it after a thousand, or a hundred thousand, as many times as humanly possible wouldn't do the trick. He had to go beyond that. Here, where moral obligations and mortal intelligence had no say in any matter, something must change. He, too, lost himself in the blinding madness, and burst into light that needn't even be said could barely match that before him. In a spew of musculature and gross delirium, he came out fighting. An arm the size of an eighteen wheeler erupted from the steam once more, tore through feathers, snapped shut around one segment of the beak, and broke off a piece larger than what remained. With it in hand, the beast received a kick to what little space remained on its front, and he charged at it as it fell back. He hammered away at the eyes with its own beak until he had torn the muscles from within his own arm, and while he had so much more to do, so much more to scream, so much to relish -- he gripped at the teeth that bordered the endless space within her. From the very corners of her "mouth", he split her apart, one foot stuck at the bottom and two mighty fists with thumbs wrenched inside of her. His back was just as bad as the beast's, as every struggle sent his muscles fuming, each pain creating a quaking spasm across his body. But he endured, endured, endured -- until there was no more. Awash with blood, he did it again. He won the day. Even if it took slaughtering his best and only friend up until the end, he did it. His hands and feet were nearly cleaved in two from the way the teeth had gnashed at them, but with a furious effort he bisected the beast. The job was not entirely finished, however. He could hardly call it a victory if there was even an ounce of it left alive. While it writhed on the ground like the vermin it was, he took his good foot to its neck. Again and again, he pummeled it. That's all it was. Vermin to be crushed under his feet. That's all it'll ever be.
This again. How many more times will I do this...? How much more of myself do I have to kill to get through the day? Is this what entertains people? Somehow, I know somewhere I'm being made the star of some tragedy. All for the sake of someone else's enjoyment. What a farce. I emerge from my own little monster hacking up a lung, like usual. Nothing's abnormal about something that would have turned heads a few years ago. And by now I've come to accept it. I was running on borrowed time in the first place. How I even lasted this long is beyond me. Ah, that's right -- I made a promise. 'Don't die.' What a simple little request. But I took it to heart, because I had nothing else. Well, here I am now -- victor of yet another mortal turmoil. Are you proud of me, kid? Would the me of back then really be happy about what I've become...? The air reeks of death and disease, which I can't even bother being disgusted by. I'm beat. As the steam envelopes me and the surrounding area, everything is washed away by the oversaturated stench of lies and -- wouldn't you know it -- failure. In front of me is the remains of the last friend I had, and the last one I'll ever had. There wasn't anything I could have done worse, and there's nothing that I could have done better. Now she's nothing more than a corpse, and I'm making my way there as well. My knees give. Before I know it, I'm puking up dry. Again, I have to use a hand to stop myself from spewing blood everywhere. It's a reaction I don't quite understand, given that everything around me's already got at least a centimeter-thick layer by now. I guess, even now, even here, I still try to keep things clean. Who taught me that, anyway...? My mother always got on my ass for being a bit of a mess, so I carried that on into my teenage years...which, as a matter of fact, haven't quite ended yet. It feels like they did ages ago. My head raises itself, and I'm filled with regret. I didn't want to look at her like this any more than I wanted her to see me the way I just was. If I had one thing to take back out of all of this, it was getting ahead of myself and showing her the worst side of me. She'd...probably never forgive that, come to think of it. I'm on my back now. Have to keep my head up, otherwise I'll start leaking everything I've got. I can't tell if my eyes are closed, or if my vision's just become absurdly bad, but I start to see flashes in front of me. Milky white little things that remind me of the birds that flew in the skies at dawn, the ones I always admired from a distance. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to make it so that everyone had a decent chance at life, because there was evil in the world that needed to be expunged. Without retribution, there would be no calling for me in life. Now, though, I can hardly ask for much more than a simple, quiet life. I imagine it wouldn't have been so bad if, say, I had a timeless job that would work anywhere, a home to return to -- and, for once, a family. What would such a life be like? What would my kids be like? Would I be satisfied with that...? ...Neither of these dreams will ever come true. And that thought terrifies me. The crushing realization of all my efforts has come to this -- complete insignificance -- is the most horrifying thought I've ever faced. I've taken monsters head on all my life, but the real beast was the lie that I made myself live. But what a beautiful lie it was.
You fool. Here you are, on your death bed, and you’re thinking what a shame it is to die here.. You don't deserve pity, you don't deserve a damned thing. What you've done will judge you. The sum of everything you've lived until now is this result. That which let you live for so long until now is what will reign in your life for good. What irony. I swallow my throat and quietly write my own eulogy within my head, because no one else is going to be there to do it for me. My name is...Eren Yeager. I was born in the year 835 to loving parents, and grew up with friends that cared for me deeply. When my parents were killed, they were all I had left. And when I became a soldier, my decisions managed to get my comrades killed. I made a lot of bad mistakes on the way, but I always thought that what I was doing was right...was I wrong in that? I tried, I really did, to correct myself whenever I could. Sincerely, I am sorry. I choke on a mixture of tears and blood, sobbing with anguish as I try to collect my past and connect it to the present. I just want to know what I did so wrong as to deserve such a merciless death. I hate it. I hate that I, and so many others, tried their damndest and don't even get a footnote in the history books. How many more have to suffer for someone else's entertainment? Maybe, I think, just maybe, if things were slightly different, then they wouldn't have happened this way. I could have lived a full life if I changed things up just a little bit. There's nothing I want more right now than a redo. I want to turn back time and do it all over again. But that won't happen. I lost my chance when I came here. To this city where nothing makes sense. I forsake everything I had so easily, and by now I can't even hold my head up high. I...accepted this city. I gave everything I had before here up, and assimilated. I’ve been here almost three years, and now there's no resistance to speak of. My existence, which was supposed to be an attack on the cruelty of this world, is about to end, with no one to witness it. I try to laugh. It comes out as a wail. By now, I can hardly tell the difference. I look up at the sky, and it’s a shimmering haze of black-blue and white as the sun rises. In the distance, I hear birds cawing, the rush of wind spurring them into action. I feel colder than I ever have, more alone than I thought ever possible. I close my eyes for the last time. There’s not enough strength left in me to open them ever again. There's so much I want to say to so many people. If I tried to list all of them, their names would choke up my throat. Things like, “I’m so grateful you’re alive,” “I trust you,” “you’re beautiful,” “I love you.” Things that should have been said. I'll never get the chance again. If I could say just one thing to everyone I know... Let's pretend none of this ever happened. After all, once I'm gone, there will surely be another to take my place. The time I enjoyed here will be nothing but a memory, and those, too, will fade with time. Like the faces I forgot, the dream I forgot, the conviction I so desperately tried to hold onto. My enemy was the cruelty of the world; I fought against the times that gave and took. Certainly, I failed in my fight.
THE END.
