Is this my supposed quirk after getting ejected into this cursed world? Looking at the sheet of paper filled with weird symbols accompanied by simple but incomprehensible words, Carter couldn’t help himself but sigh in his heart.
The young boy was filled with more confusion than excitement, every bits of information vague and, without any context, full of nonsense.
He tilted it in many directions to hopefully understand its meaning.
Glancing at the sheet for a few more seconds, he calmed himself and tried to describe every part in it.
There was a tree, on a plane, perhaps a garden, valley or something too abstract for Carter to understand.
Instead of a normal bark, the tree was apparently made of many symbols, every single one of them depicting some kind of concept, many repeating another.
They were bizarre, odd, numerous, it felt like they ranged from the simple symbol of fire, ice and elemental stuff, to the most incomprehensible shapes and designs one would only be able to speculate the meaning of.
He moved his eyes out of the confusion that the bark was.
Above the tree were group of letters that stated: ‘Concept manifestation’ and next to it, three symbols that escaped the amalgamation that constituted the tree.
Two were on the right and only one on the left, they had no alignment whatsoever, like stars that were free of the restraints and the mess of the human world.
The symbol closest to the tree had a round silhouette, one could see a profiled figure hunched enveloping a shape, precious enough to be protected by the figure’s whole body. Underneath were the words, ‘Mother of the sky’.
Further from the tree was the flat symbol of a plateau depicting giant shapes ranging from gigantic trees bigger than the hills and mountains, near them were bodies of water and above were floating platforms filling the limited space of the symbol. Underneath were the words, ‘Goddess of nature’.
The final symbol on the left depicted simple buildings, and a simple dark skull, made darker still by the amount of ink Carter used to colour it in his trance, such darkness made the whole a lot denser and different from the others. Underneath were the words, ‘God of death’.
And just beneath the same symbol’s name was another sentence.
Such familiar wording could only make Carter’s eyes twitch in unintentional dread.
‘Perhaps you will find this one most pleasing, Carter’.
For now, the young boy just wanted to ignore that last part, getting his head elsewhere for the moment.
His heart was pounding a bit, the implication of just that sentence making its way little by little into Carter’s mind.
If imprinting knowledge could be done, what else was at stake?
He felt naked, his own mind playing tricks on him.
He was now scared to even move an inch, fearing that all his actions were directed by someone else’s.
He was thinking more and more.
Was he always this fearful? Were his emotions ever real?
His vision restricting more and more, he looked around hastily.
Is that thing watching me?
Everywhere, he began seeing eyes on the room, the same black eyes that were watching in his dream, unable to move, strings all over his body.
He wanted to hide, to run.
He wasn’t mad, he swore they were all around.
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So he took his pencil and stabbed his hand with it.
Biting his lip, he stayed there, only thinking about his physical pain for a while.
The pencil wasn’t too sharp, but with how much force he put into it, his flesh was pierced clean.
Looking around again, no eyes were watching.
Fuck, I need to hide this.
Putting the paper down, drops of blood plastred on it, Carter rushed to the wardrobe.
Opening it, he searched through Ciel’s outfits with his left hand.
After a while, he decided to rip one of the shirts, made a simplified bandage, and realized midway he hadn’d disinfected it first.
He looked around before deciding he had no time for it.
Putting a pair of black gloves on, he closed the wardrobe and exhaled.
His head was itching, his brain getting more and more uncomfortable as time passed.
He scratched his head.
He returned to the table, sat on the chair for a while, still scratching his head.
As seconds passed, the scratches intensified.
The itching of his head did not stop.
Fearing the worst, Carter breathed deeper, retracted his focus off the itching and back on the paper and the physical pain he inflicted on his hand.
He started describing the image further.
Looking through it, his eyes landed on the top of the tree.
There were three skulls.
One was higher than the two, so joining the three with lines would form a simple triangle.
His sctatches became slower and slower.
Thinking for a bit, he took the pencil on the table, still with a bit of blood.
W-When did I see these three before? His thoughts slow, he asked himself while getting the blood off the pencil with a cloth he took from the wardrobe.
Finally recognizing the three, Carter labelled them under their symbols, his right hand trembling from the pain.
First, ‘Pride’.
Second, ‘Greed’.
Third, ‘Gluttony’.
Finishing labelling the modern depiction of these three sins, he returned his eyes to another part of the drawing.
It seemed to have droused his internal discomfort.
To the right corner was a shape.
It was a moon.
Recognizing it, Carter twitched his eyes and labelled it as ‘The fleeting’.
His lower lip began bleeding.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized how little he actually knew about this world.
And the more he realized, the more his skin crawled under his wears.
From the fleeting, to him questionning his own self, to his brain contracting and moving in his skull... something was wrong.
He put his hand on it again, prepared to scratch it more and more.
Trembling like a leaf, he tried recalling everything that happened to him.
I am Carter, twenty-two years old, human, student…
He recounted his whole life, over and over again, his eyes hollow, his mouth moving automatically.
... I work twelve hours a day... Died of exhaustion...
Gathering what was left of his will, he took a bit of momentum...
...and I...was far crazier...than this!
...and slammed it on the table.
After a while, he slammed it again.
Coursing his left hand through his hair, he grunted.
Then he focused his attention to the drawing again, there wasn’t much left to figure out as the most striking parts were all already labelled.
His head was spinning.
He looked at all the words that already existed and a part of the image.
It took him some time to read even a word on the paper.
Apart from what he had already read, there were only two left.
One was under the tree, it read “Conceptual tree”.
And one above, just under the three skulls. It read “Concept manifestation”.
Carter breathed heavily, not realizing he had already read the one above.
His right hand was hurting, his head was hurting, he was dizzy and felt like passing out.
Shaking it, he fought through it all.
He felt like if he was to pass out, something really bad might happen.
So, he looked at the whole paper and decided to study it a bit more.
It took Carter a few seconds of consideration and thoughts to begin with writing what he already knew.
He decided he would string the similarities together, painting a comprehensive work without getting overwhelmed.
Domains, lords, rays and, he put the last word close to the cluster of its own in the sky, white threads.
Carter’s head was splitting.
So much... yet so little.
He inclined his body on the back of the wooden chair.
His eyes were beginnig to close on their own.
I need a smoke. He thought reminiscing on the infectious smell of Tabaco in his mouth while his body was still ten.
Exhaling, he returned to thinking.
Fifteen minutes of agony had passed, every second looming like a guillautine on Carter’s head.
He wondered if he could rest, if he could close his eyes and finally go to sleep.
But every time his eyes blurred, stares coming from his madness would wake him up, followed by his hurting hand.
And everytime he would lose even a single ounce of focus, his brain would let him know about a feeling of wrongness only a madman’s could give.
On any of them, his inability to know was making his heart pound every single time.
For a moment, he felt hopeless.
He considered letting himself sleep, or letting his madness get the best of him.
But before, he could do anything else, a figure started approaching from the corridor.
Feeling its approach, he instinctivelly put the bloody pencil and the sheet of paper in the drawer of the table.
Carter gave the figure a side eye.
W-Who is that? No, it doesn’t matter, I need hel-
Suddenly his mind went blank and his vision became blurry; he could hear an unfamiliar male voice outside his door.
Soft and melodious
much like a lullaby, it entered his ear whispering:
“Sleep little one, for the night is still young.”