big fan of mrs concepts’ rewrite idea!! okay so i’ve never bullied anyone before so i’m just gonna use some of the most menacing(-ish, they’re kind of lacklustre) emojis i can find, and hope for the best
😡😡🤬🙄🤬😠😠😠😾(why is there an angry cat? why isn’t the angry cat giving any standard ‘unhappy cat’ cues??)😠😠☹️🙄😞😠😡🤬😤😤😤
ok thank you for your time. hope i didn’t decimate you with my phenomenal bulling and unparalleled antagonising message
The sky is an angry pink, a sure sign of storm on the horizon. You try not to look. Try not to think about what you're doing. The choice, after all, was made hours ago. It cannot be unmade now.
If you look up at that sky, frothing with clouds launched from some unseen master's spraypaint can, you will question yourself.
If you look down at the grass, crisp and brown from a summer without rain, you will find another question waiting. And another still in the incline, the curve stretching up, up, up toward that stormy horizon. Another still, in the tread of your worn canvas sneakers, slipping here and there as you grind your teeth, force your legs to carry you ever higher.
You can't afford the questions. You can't afford much at all, except the acid in your thighs, the aching clench of your calves, the sweat trickling down your brow. You don't think about any of it.
You climb. You climb, and you keep the words in your head. They came to you, unbidden, like a song in the middle of the night. They came to you, and you knew they would work. They always have before, for anyone fool enough to shape them.
Are you a fool? Outside answer suggests yes. Outside answer suggests anyone who strides--no, not strides; runs--up a slope that crests like a capital D at dawn must be a fool. Mad, at the very least. But you know, in your heart, that this will work. That one must sacrifice much for this sort of collusion. It's the oldest formula in the world, isn't it? Height times slope times hubris. No room for question. No room for letting the madness settle in your belly.
You climb, as near to a run as you can manage, up and up and up, and the words come. The words shape, salt-hot, breathed in sharp, ragged pants. Any god worth stretching toward will listen. The oldest ones always do. That, some part of you understands, is the danger.
Make the deal. Make the deal with the oldest words, multiply height and slope and hubris, demand what you must. God will answer. Which one, you can't say, but it matters little. Climb. Ask. Make the deal.
When you reach the top, the spell will catch, pull tight, an enduring knot yanked to absolution. Invisible hands will clasp. Salt-rhyme words will burn.
The person who slides down the other side of this hill--who will they be? You will not know, not for certain. Not until you return home, to that little room with its scratched-silver mirror. Until you peer into the glass.
Who will look back? Will you find the deal has been accepted? Will you find the old gods--whichever is good-humored enough to listen in on the prayers of mortal fools--wanting?
Whose eyes will gaze back?
You grit your teeth. You repeat the words. You climb.