A Homage To My Dante-Lunar

“Here, my child. Drink up.”



His face haunted the very last vestiges of my dreams, overloaded my senses and damned my soul.



Mother.



Everything I needed, and nothing I wanted.



Mother.



So, I met my end, as did other children, with pain, kicking and screaming. But I was the one he would never forget, the eldest, the bravest. In the cold, bitter end, it was a shame I had to die, I remember those, his words quite clearly.



“Ah, such a shame, little Dante. I really had grown quite fond of you. I was maybe thinking of keeping you, unleashing you on the world, so we could rule together. Ah, but you are not ready yet. No, I’ll have to be rid of you. Shh, stop your suffering and pain. Close those eyes. Remember, Mother knows best. Yes. Sleep. No more pain. By the power I contain, I command thee to cease. Cease and shush, Dante. Rest in your failure.”



And my eyes, violet and tender, so young and so reckless. Always full of peace and obedience for the man that I loved, for my Mother. Those eyes, my eyes, looked up at him, seeking a jest, and joke. I was greeted by cold, unemotional bliss. The waves of pain I was feeling seemed so far away, as I gazed into his smiling, calm face. Failure. I had failed him. I felt like a worthless worm. I wanted to crawl away, and die. I was certainly dying now, but I didn’t want him to be near me when I did it. I couldn’t bear the thought of him seeing me like this, lower than low, losing all respect that he would have had for me.



What respect? He killed you.



The tiny voice in my head that I hate so much makes me cringe, and I shrink ever deeper into the wood floor. I can feel the glass that I had drank, that he had made me drink, no, that he had tricked me into drinking, cutting and sawing away at my insides, like the Knives of the Hundred. My Mary-Janed feet and knees are drawn to my chest, and I feel like the world is ending around me. Mother still stands above me, smiling peacefully, making shapes in the air with his long, slender fingers, and saying, all the while, quite clearly:



“Die, my child, die. Death, so sweet and pure, binding your wrists with razors, slitting your throat with knives. You are nothing, you are nobody. You have no life, it all belongs to me. From my flesh you were birthed, back to my flesh you will go. My Dante, my primal instinct, come back. You are not worthy. Die, my child, die.”



I feel tears of blood, hot and sticky, pour forth from my eyes, nose and mouth. Wave after wave of pain curls my body even tighter, like a sickly, scared hedgehog, and my Id, the driving force in my body that I have fought so hard to control for the past three months, begins to take over. My teeth elongate into fanged points, my eyes slit and feral. I glare up at Mother, who simply watches me, with feigned interest, as if I were some circus freak. I feel my voice, rough and barking, rip at my throat like the glass I had swallowed, and it comes out harsh.



“You promised me we’d always be together. I loved you, I trusted you! I knew only you! Take it back, I won’t fail again! Take me back!”



This mantra, I suppose it be my death cry, I repeat over and over again, until Mother deals a sharp kick to my stomach. I feel my ribs crack and weakened, glass chewed flesh rupture with the force of it, and I know that I had just sealed my fate. My now-clawed hands reach out, scratching wildly, trying to get Mother as he had got me, to rip him to shreds as he did me. The blood is pouring out of every orifice now, and I didn’t have to look down at my pants to know that it was coming out of my arse and manhood as well. The pain is everywhere, blinding, excruciating, more so than ever before. I feel my black hair become matted and soaked with blood, and Mother just glares at me. It was a long time, full of pain and shame, before he spoke again.



“I shan’t take you back; I shan’t fix what I’ve done. You’re nothing, a nobody to me, understand? You deserve it, all of it! All this pain, all this hurt could have been avoided, Dante. If you’d have just been a good boy, like I asked, I wouldn’t have had to kill you! But you couldn’t, could you? You just had to be the bad thing, the horrible badness. You failed me for the last time, and for that, you will die. Now stop screaming and moaning, and fucking take it like the creature I thought I raised you to be!”



I fell silent almost immediately.