ETHEREAL STORIES

THE UNDESCENDED DEMIGOD

I couldn't feel my fingers or my toes, lying on the immensely cold hard rock surface with blood in my nose and the rain in my eyes, I for the life of me couldn't figure out what the hell had happened to me.

I lifted myself up in a painfully slow manner and took a deep breath which felt like inhaling fire hot daggers, I put one foot in front of the other. Walking on the cold rough stone was making me dizzy with pain, I looked down to see my feet, they were bare and the tips of my toes were turning blue.

It had been so long since I had a dream of being outside but even if I knew everything about the world, it had been centuries since I was stuck in that offending cage. A cage with spells to keep the God in me locked, a cage with hard unbreakable iron to keep the human in me from breaking out easily.

With each labored breath I took a step forward and I kept walking, I gulped down the urge to vomit from the pain and I kept going. At last I found a tree, a very old colorful tree bent in a grotesque way which reminded me of a burnt corpse, I shuddered at that image and walked towards it.

As soon as I reached it, I swear I heard something sigh with relief, I looked around startled, ready to run even if it broke my legs. Fear shot up my spine, even more so, when I realized that the winds had made the sound. I leaned heavily against the rough bark of the ancient tree and slid down the bark tearing holes into my flimsy silk blood soaked shirt.

I coughed out blood and spit it out to clear my mouth for breathing, the pain was going to make me unconscious and maybe I would end up dying here, unknown, unattended, lonely, forgotten and despicable.

Every year the knowledge that flooded my brain about the universe must have meant something, it must have come from someone. I looked around to see if anyone would help me but there was no one.

I projected my hearing, my soul senses far and wide to feel another someone or something, it just filled me with more hopelessness than ever because all I felt was emptiness.

Even during all the time in my cage I had been able to learn something new from the knowledge that was being sent, I had hope that one day I would get out of that offending cage that weakened me but did not offer death.

In the initial years I had tried to break open the cage and hence lost years of my life being unconscious or almost dead because of the powerful spells which felt like a caress of love yet contained me inside the darkness. I had learnt the hard way that the more I tried to break the cage the more it strengthened from my unfruitful efforts.

The cage had always been surrounded by unrelenting inky black darkness all these years and a single rectangular opening which let in air. I had tried putting my hand out into the opening and immediately felt my hand being electrocuted and the sensation only got stronger the many times I tried it.

Only today, after so many years of meaningless captivity in solitude I was let out, the first thing I sensed was the pitch darkness becoming grayish and the rectangular hole becoming clear.

Suddenly I was out in the open, the fresh air hurt my lungs but in a good way, I could see flat expanse of rock stretching around me for miles and nothing else I could also see a very old trees without leaves in the distance.

Suddenly I felt goose bumps break out on my skin, the hair on my neck stood straight up and I felt the air getting charged with imminent danger.

I felt it before it hit me, a big lightning bolt, at least I thought it was a lightning bolt because I could smell the ozone in the air and the next second my skin was burning and I could feel blood oozing out of the fresh new wounds on my body.

I fell hard and scraped my knees bloody, I didn't know what was happening to me, was this punishment? Was this the end? Was this how I would die? Without getting answers to my life? Without being accepted into this miserable world? Without knowing what I was?