"How I long for you, my sister. I wish everything bad that happened ceased to exist. I wish for everything to return to normal. I wish to be with you again. But I cannot. For it must happen. And it must exist. Because we are meant to be like this. For the sake of the world, my sister. Why? Why must you be like that? A person… A person who I've always despised? Why must you become someone I despised?"
"Brother?" Asmodea calls out from a distance near a tree filled with bushes. She circles it as if looking for somebody. Frantically switching her glances each time. "Stop hiding!" She calls out, giggling. A few seconds of utter silence broke as Asreus popped out of the bush and tackled his sister, shouting:
"I got you!" Asreus exclaimed, tackling Asmodea as both children fell to the ground, laughing. Asreus gets on top of Asmodea, pinning her to the ground.
"Brother, get off of me!" Asmodea exclaimed giggling as she hysterically laughed at her brother's tickling.
"Not a chance, Asmodea. Take this!" He declared, raising his hands, elevated before her side waist. Both his index and middle, straightened as the other fingers clasped to the palm, raising it a little higher once again as he injected his hands onto her waist, tickling her even more as she cried in laughter.
"Hahahahaha! Brother, stop it!" Asmodea said laughing.
"Not a chance!" Asreus uses all of his fingers and tickles her even more on her waist. "What about here?" He switches his hand's position and tickles her on her neck, making her laugh even more.
"Hahaha, stop it! Stop it!" She exclaimed, laughing even more. Her laughs echo throughout the garden as both children laugh hysterically hard, their eyes well up with tears as Asmodea lies there unable to breathe properly. Asreus, unable to sense this, kept tickling her even further for minutes.
"Khh, stop— brother–" She calls out to him to stop, but didn't. Asreus sat there, smiling. Thinking about his sister's stupid face she was making. Then all of a sudden, a disembodied voice of a woman calls out to them. Asreus looks up with a wide smile, still sitting on Asmodea's stomach.
"Asreus? Asmodea?" The disembodied voice calls out.
"Mother, we are right here!" Asreus replied, shouting.
"I'm coming, dear! Mother's coming!" Queen Eryss called out cheerfully.
"Alright, Mother!" Asreus slowly lifted his leg and stood up, walking over to the disembodied voice away from the frame. "Come on, sister," Asreus called out. His sister, lay there, unnoticed. Frozen on the ground, motionless. Seconds passed, and Queen Eryss walked up to them with her hands open for a warm hug. "Come here, my child—" Nearing her child's embrace, noticing a familiar figure lying on the ground, motionless, is a paled-skin Asmodea. Her lips were blue, and her eyes rolled back.
"OH GODS, MY BABY!" Queen Eryss shrieked, shouting. Her eyes immediately welled up as she ran towards her body— immediately crouched down as she grabbed her head, chanting a word Asreus couldn't comprehend.
"Asreus, what has happened to your sister?!" Eryss asked, shouting. Asreus stares at his sister's seemingly lifeless body— static. His eyes widened in fear, hands shaking. Everything went numb. His ears deafened. Unable to hear his own mother's cry of anger. He stood there, shaking. He stood there, numbing.
"This… This never happened…" Asreus muttered to himself. "I didn't do this to her." Asreus' eyes welled up with tears, his mouth, shaking.
"I did not do this to her. I did not do this to my beloved sister." He muttered to himself once more.
"I don't remember this. THIS NEVER HAPPENED!" Asreus accidentally shouted. His eyes widened in the realization of his own actions as he covered his mouth with both hands— perplexed. Lying there, before his eyes, a motionless mother carrying the body of her daughter, Asreus' vision of color went absolutely grey. It seemed in his vision, that time had stopped.
"What is happening…?" Asreus thought. Feeling the cold chills from his back, he felt something ominous creeping up behind his nape.
"You did this." A disembodied raspy voice whispered to his right ear. "YOU killed me." Static. His body froze in utter fear—sins crawling on his back. He slowly turned to his left— breath quickened. Slowly turning his head to face the disembodied voice calling out to him, a hand as cold as ice, appeared from his right as it rested on his right cheek. Panicked, he turned his head to his right, hoping to unveil the apparition that haunts him. To his surprise, no one was there. His head frantically moved in every direction, hoping to spot the body of the disembodied hand he had felt crawling on his cheek.
"Who are you?!" Asreus exclaimed, trembling in fear. His lower lip quivered tremendously, sensing the terrible cold from before. "Reveal yourself!" He called out, his fist curled up into a ball, shaking. As the temperature from the garden quickly rose, the sun's radiant light slowly dissipated as fog emerged from each corner of the room, seeping through the ground. An unearthly moan emerges from both sides of Asreus' mortal ears, chilling him to the bone. His skin shriveled in fear, trembling as he awaited— anticipating who would reveal itself before him. His heart throbbing each second the clock ticks— "Thump. Thump." His heart pulsated, adrenaline kicking in, though, engulfed in fear.
"You don't even remember?" The disembodied voice spoke once more. This time, Asreus recognizes it. Prompting his body to instantly freeze.
"You don't remember doing that to me, don't you, brother?" The disembodied voice echoed, vibrating on Asreus' wall, seeping through his membrane, as the ghastly voice of a woman slowly disappeared— echoing through the thick, dark fog.
"Asmodea…?" Asreus uttered from a hit of realization.
"CORRECT!" The same ghastly voice echoed through the fog, prodding Asreus to turn around immediately.
As the disembodied voice materialized, revealing itself from him. Its physical form is a pale woman, its neck as blue as the deep sea waters. Its shape— contorted and twisted. Its eyes, welled up with tears of blood, connecting the stream of water on her pale cheeks. Pupils dilated, bloodshot scleras. Her mouth was deformed, her jaws dislocated, resting below her neck.
The contorted figure of a deceased Asmodea slowly hovers towards Asreus, triggering his Fight or flight response. "By Eiysmr!" Asreus exclaimed as he took a step back. Regrettably, trembling in fear, he loses his balance, as he falls due short into the fogged-up grasslands of the yet unseeable garden.
"Fool." Asmodea's voice echoed, ceasing her flight for a mere second as she regained her contorted jaw, delivering an ominous smile, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth, sprinting towards him, dispatching a blood-curling shriek with her hands hovering in front.
Asreus' eyes widened, mouth opened, screaming in such fear. Asmodea's blood-stricken hands hastily met his neck; His sclera—tainted with reddish hues. His eyes rolled back, frozen point blank, unable to move, as if time had stopped with his eyes stricken back inside the cavity, called off, the point of no return—his vision— darkened, fuzzy, unable to see. With eyes rolled back, screaming at the top of his lungs, his inability to breathe had restricted his use of living; the state of his dying pile of flesh, engulfed by the utter pressure he is facing in all his life—convulsing like the meat grinding hardware used by the Merchant butchers downtown.
In his final moments, the ghastly voice of his murderous sister came to an abrupt end as he awoke from his nightmarish slumber. Aghast from his imaginative reality, with a thousand waterfalls poured down from the side of his head, the spinal column, and from under his arms, came about a running sweat, profusely sliding down his body. Unable to catch his breath, still remembering the touch of his sister's hands wrapped around his hands, he took his deepest breath, unable to comprehend the state of his reality. Asreus blinked twice, trying to wake up from his yet another dream. "Am I awake?!" He thought, panicking. "What if I try pinching myself; will that even work?" He contemplated, hesitant to try it out. He closed his eyes as if fearing the pain of a pinch. Placing his left hand on his right arm, with two fingers nestled on it. He took a deep breath and pinched himself as hard as he could; to where Asreus awoke from his awful pinch, to where he realized, he had gone back to his fabric of reality, exclaiming:
"OUCH!" He screamed, sliding his left hand on his pinched arm, rubbing the pain out of his now, reddish skin.
"That dream… Was it real?" He muttered to himself, unable to fathom how vivid the dream was, he quickly sat on the right side of his bed, both hands resting on both sides, contemplating.
"It couldn't be. But the geist… The ghost that haunted me in my dreams… That was Asmodea…" He wrapped both his hands around his stressful face— forehead, wrinkling from the undeniable stressful awakening that had just occurred.
CHAPTER, END.