Paradise Lost (JSAB)

DARKNESS LOOMS

i dont know where i am it feels like im drowning i look down and theres only a bloody stump where my left leg used to be theres red theres red where there shouldnt be red theres nothing where there should be something half of my vision is gone everything is just red just red just more and more red red red an oblivion of just red too much red an ocean of red just red just nothing but red there is someone somebody something chasing me down like a hunted prey i need to run but my leg is red how can there ever be this much red i havent seen so much goddamn red since the day I was born it was red so red so so so red but it was peaceful and calm and lovely but this red is just blinding its choking its red toomuchredtoomuchredtoomuchredredredred

Fresh woke up at exactly 6:13 in a cold sweat, gasping for air with a white-knuckled fist clutching the right side of his face like he was afraid it would fall off.

God damnit... This was why he gets less than an hour of sleep per night...

His nails, despite being short and kept trimmed close to the flesh, were digging into his flesh so painfully that when he felt around his head, there were five small deep valleys across his skin. One of which was actually bleeding. He also realised there was a thick layer of sweat plastered across his bloodless features and even streams of tears leaking from his eyes. The rest of his body wasn't any dryer. Hell, he was practically swimming in sweat, pooling in his bedsheets.

Ew...

Yeah he needed to change the sheets later...

He felt disgusting, like there was a thick blanket of slime coating his entire body, dripping off of his limbs like mucus. Ugh. He couldn't stand to feel filthy, not after thousands of years rotting under layers and layers of unwashed hair crawling with fleas- so he immediately got up, ordered someone to change his sheets and went to go take a bath.

He stayed in there for a couple of hours, scrubbing more than a few layers of skin off to get rid of that goddamned feeling. Of being back.

Dirtied by the past. Dirtied by the memories. Dirtied by the emotions. Feeling as if it were corrupting him wouldn't be very... Accurate, per se, but just the feeling itself certainly did make him feel disgusting. Anything reminding him of a time where he wasn't pink. Anything reminding him of a time where there was just red instead. It made him feel like the anxiety and disgust was a physical poison leaking out of his pores, like there were physical hands pulling him into a moment in time that made him want to bend over and vomit at the memory of. The world seemed to look down on him, despite his unnaturally large size. His head spun and suddenly his horns started feeling heavier and heavier. Even just thinking back to it made his body itch with anxiety and repulsion, like worms crawling under his skin.

There was no one to see him when he sighed and submerged his head under the water, not surfacing for a long, long time.

The only reason why Fresh ever arose from that bathtub-so-big-its-technically-a-swimming-pool was because he heard a knock at the bathroom door, and a familiar voice calling through the wood.

"Uh, Fresh?" Barracuda's voice sounded a bit nervous. "Are you okay? You've... Kinda been in there for like... Four hours."

"I'm fine." Fresh called back, raising his voice so she could hear without leaving the bath. "Just... Really relaxed in here."

"Oh, good, I was thinking that maybe you tried to take in more of the Tree of Life's power and ended up putting yourself into a coma again-"

"What!? No!"

"Well if you're still alive, get your ass down to the dining hall, or the pancakes are getting cold."

"Fine." He sighed, finally getting out of the tub after forgetting the concept of time was for a while. "I'll come."