I don’t wanna talk about what happened after I found Jiji.

I mean….I just don’t. Whatever. Get over it. Just…Things were said—things flew out of her lips—like, I can’t even repeat them, so I won’t, alright? And I wasn’t on my A game and it actually got really gross with some snot, and I’m not even exactly sure what happened, or why it happened, or like…where it came from. But yeah. I ended up attacking Jiji, and I wasn’t even sorry.






….okay, you’re right, this needs some back story. I can’t just drop drama-bombs like that, we’re not in the right zone.

Anyway, um.

Pretty much, the Jiji that I saw wasn’t…Jiji. Well, apparently she was, but when I saw her at that moment I guess the tears were doing something funky to my vision, and my crying headache was telling me things in my brain that didn’t make sense, but made perfect sense and no matter what kind of sense it made, I ran with it. It was all I could cling to—it was all that was keeping me from drowning. So yeah, I stood there frozen on the spot, everything (even my pansy tears) halted, even my breathing paused in an exaggerated fashion as I looked at that thing. And I thought thing and not Jiji, because if I thought Jiji I would just die.

(Because I did that to her.)

But the thing is, even with this fallibly infallible logic scrambling up my brain circuits, the heart has a funny way of doing battle with your mind in the most crucially fucked moments of your life. Because my head told me what I was looking at—this dark, decaying, nasty-ass horse corpsey thing-- was a thing, but my body…my body screamed Jiji at me, and when it screams Jiji it’s not fuckin’ around. I know that bitch. I’ve known her since the day I hit the dirt from Ma’s gross parts—I had been by her side almost every freaking day of my life. Almost every day. That was the tragedy, I guess. It would’ve been a joke but this is Jiji we’re talking about so you better not laugh. Bastard.

So…yeah, my brain was doing one thing and my heart was doing another and I was doing nothing, just standing there, staring at this Jiji-thing, already crushed and dying even though the world was somehow finding a way to squeeze the most hateorade and misery out of my slowly shriveling soul. I have to tell you now: In that moment I had never felt so proud to be my Daddy’s child.
But then….see, I don’t even know. Something happened—something changed. I don’t…I can’t even tell you what, or how, or why, but suddenly, I went apeshit. I think…I….

Oh.

Oh. Now I remember.

She said….”You owe me”. I owed her.

I owed…what?

What did I owe?

WHAT DID I OWE?!

Was it anger? Was it fear? Search me, but if I had to guess (and it WOULD be a guess, because fuck if I know anything), I was turning desperate. She screamed at me and beat me down so much, and something inside just burst and suddenly….I quit. I was done. I….I was done.

I am done.

“I owe you,” I heard myself say, dead-pan and curious and…surprisingly light. “I owe…you?” And oh shit this thing was starting to grow inside me, growing and growing and gone, and it exploded and things were overflowing and my blood was just boiling--no, it was electrified--it was shocking me, shocking my bones, shocking my nerves and my muscles and frying the tears out my ears and ringing in my ears and sending a metallic taste in my tongue, and I didn’t know what was happening but it was pain, all sorts of pain everywhere, and I was suffering inside and out and I was done, done, done and I was hoping Dad was watching because I was done—

—I was done—

“I owe you,” I was saying, my mouth moving without my consent, my heart fluttering and probably already dead and something trying to get out, needing to get out and I didn’t know how to let it all out. “I owe—I owe you. Yeah,” I scoffed—I laughed—I snarled, my eyes growing wild and my antennae bangs starting to whip around me because they, too, could feel something deep inside needing release, “Yeah, I owe you, I owe you and him and that guy and some other bitch down the road and Dad—I owe—I owe you all.” Growing, growing, bursting, painful, I was dying and Jiji was already dead and I was about to explode, “I owe everyone and their ma—even MY Ma—I owe—I OWE EVERY GOD DAMNED HORSE anything and everything I am and if it’s not enough—“ Pain, pain, pain, so much shock, too much shock and it was killing me, “—it don’t matter CUZ I OWE YOU AND I GOTTA GIVE IT UP, DON’T I?! TO HELL WITH ROS, SHE AIN’T SHIT, BUT THAT’S OKAY CUZ YOU CAN GET SOMETHING FROM HER. YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE—EVERYONE HAS A DEBT I GOTTA PAY CUZ EVERYONE NEEDS SHIT. EVERYONE!!”

Everyone.

…Anyway, that thing that was killing me? It wasn’t actually killing me. It was…it finally found a way out of me, through the tip of my horn. A blue lightning bolt, this thick, twisting thing like an electric serpent singeing the air and burning the mist as it slithered from my body. A motherfucking lighting bolt--shooting straight for Jiji, this Jiji-thing taunting me, breaking me, making me realize—

—I was done.


@[Ranjiri]



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