Drabbles

Atrocity remastered // 06

Written: 2023.
Fiction
Warning: Religion???? Anxiety and also this one has he/him and she/her pronouns I am so sorry 😭😭
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„...when all falls short, remember that that's what you do best."

The hallways never were empty, if anything they had been decorated so well that heaven could be casted aside. Baby blue wallpaper and the cold gray tiles were just the obvious you'd spot when entering from the dull corridor set outside of his room. The ceiling was built tall so that it can hold the crystal chandeliers, made from luxury and all the tears of the liars. But he never had an idea of what a liar was, born and raised in a family so loving that it made the worst of the villains cry. And they were no liars.

Nobody ever knew just how long does the hallway stretch, but it was said that they never wanted to know anyway. The beauty of it kept all eyes enchanted, especially the pictures displayed on the walls. He found it nausiating, the cause of it unknown. The malignant feeling seemed to only grow stronger as he wandered deeper. Even if the golden frames matched the aesthetic of this weirdly claustrophobic place, the paintings themselves were unfamiliar, out of place.

Portraits of people he felt like he knew, all staring deeply into his eyes, and sceneries resembling places from his childhood. There were pots of flowers shoved to the sides, leaves brushing around his knees, as if they were teasing, warning.

It wasn't long until he noticed that water dripped slowly from underneath a painting of a woman with an uncharacteristic grin on her face. Everything was unsettling to him and yet people kept saying that they have still to find a place as serene as this neverending hallway.

He didn't pass up the opportunity to stride faster, moving away from the creepy woman, hoping to find some solace in a place like this. The clocks let him know that he has been wandering for an hour and no matter how much he wanted to turn back, an invisible force, along the lines of determination has pushed him further down.

He soon found out that he wasn't the only person in this heavenly hellspace, seeing a man a couple of meters away, looking at one of the many paintings. From what he could notice, the man had a solemn expression on his face, arms in akimbo, and the suit he wore was wrinkled, as if it has never met the warmth of an iron. The sound of his own footsteps alerted the unfamiliar man, turning his head to the cause as if he was running from something.

„Who are you? I promised to atone for my sins already! I don't need someone to follow me around!" He was confused at the man's frantic sentences, wondering what has gotten him so twisted up.

„Sorry, what?"

There wasn't much he could say anyway, a priest might've known though. He cautiously stepped closer, spine curving, letting the man see that he was playing defense. Somehow he failed to notice that his hands have been shaking ever so slightly, sweating from nervousness he also wasn't able to pinpoint the cause of.

„Oh... Sorry, I thought you were sent by the devil. I've been in here for so long that I can't tell the difference between humans and demons. It gets tricky."

Now all that shakiness and sweat had a reason to hold his body down. The rational side of his brain told him that the man was just crazy, but the paranoid screamed so loud that it made every other sound inaudiable. How can a place such as this one have such a morbid history around it?

„I don't think I understand... Devil? Demons? Can you explain?"

It was the man's turn to be confused, twiddling with his fingers as if what he was about to say was a sin. But in some twisted way, it was.