The Walk
It was a dream—yes, nothing but a dream, pretending to be awake.
When he took his first breath, he did not know who—or what—he was. They told him he was immortal, but that was a cruel lie. His hands were stained and tainted black by time, his feet scorched and cracked from walking this earth for millions of years, and with every step he took—along with every empty soul he encountered—something inside him rotted, spoiled, and grew ugly. As each year passed, his once-glowing skin slowly turned to ash.
To him, a lifetime flickered past like a single, forgettable day, each reality dissolving on his tongue with the same stale taste. Rest was a mercy denied; stillness, a forbidden luxury. So forever he drifted—endlessly, relentlessly—condemned to move without reprieve.
He keeps walking.
Since the fall of man, every person he encountered caused his spirit to wilt further. Every word spoken caused a feather from his wings to fall.
Humans are creatures of fragile vessels—he learned; they brim with tempests of feeling that surge and spill restless tides within the confines of this thing they called a heart.
And such emotion was too much for him to handle; he was not built for it.
But he keeps walking; it is his purpose.
“What would it be like to have one—would I be grateful for it or call it a curse?”
He often wondered whether his creator had ever imagined he could perish at all—or if he had been made for the sole purpose of dying endlessly.
His thoughts wandered to the creator of this experiment—the mind that shaped the smoldering ghostly rock beneath their feet. Were humans merely flawed angels, corrupted by the burden of thought… or had his own birth been the blemish that tainted their purity?
Whoever created them bestowed no blessings upon them.
Only debts.
Only sins to repay in endless days.
Long ago, before the fall, when he himself was newly formed, he was told he was a gift cast upon the earth, forged in the infernal frozen fires of hell.
At first, he believed himself human, for he wore their likeness well. But he soon learned the difference. To be human was to repent – to spend a lifetime drowning in sin while pleading for forgiveness from others, from oneself, or from some forgotten divinity.
But he never begged.
He was not a sinner, but he was damned.
They gave him countless names, each different, yet all meaning the same.
They called him Death.
They called him Love, for the two were but the same mirrored reflections of one another. And often he wondered when they would grant him a fixed name.
When that day finally arrived…
They called him Satan; their tongues were dripping with venom as they spoke it.
That day, he decided to give himself a name and called himself human.
And he kept walking.
About the author
Rayan Malek is a writer and poet. Her work focuses on themes like identity, memory, and personal experience she often leaves her pieces open to interpretation.
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