#squibsfics

As always, the starry sky houses the moon in the same spot. Tilts it at the same angle, down to the very degree.

As always, the trees draw the same oblong shadows upon the forest floor. Never an inch too thick or too wide, and permanently slanted one way in spite of perspective.

As always, the campfire crackles the same few notes, a bassist in the forest’s melancholic song. It’s grown predictable, the rippling water, the creaking wood. The pitter-patter of wildlife in a freshly empty world liberated in humanity’s absence.

As always, the moment lies in stasis. Unchanged from when he first sat upon this log with his wings slumped low, strung dejectedly to his back with threads of shame, guilt and regret.

Most humorously, his introspection is all that ever changes. When did it grow from silent reflection to the deepest, most relentless rounds of brooding? The fifth time? The fiftieth?

Is he doomed to mope here forever? Arrive freshly wounded from another gratifying defeat, only for the real pain to come from his actions?

Who can wash sins dipped in the thickest tar? Is there a confessional mighty enough for his crimes, mightier than the council who assigned them to begin with?

What is the verdict of a fool puppeteered for eons? A tool for uprooting all supposed evil save from his own, arguably the worst of it all? 

He is a fool. A murderer. A monster. 

Even so, it is not enough to sulk. There are wrongs to right, a pompous head to sever and a tyrannized heaven to set free. And that is just the start of it, his penitence. It will be profound. He will make the greatest amendments for his worst sins. Stop at nothing to rectify the ills brought by his zealous hands, even as his life spills away in pathetic litres. Then, with the very last of his strength, he will pray. Not to God, whose death mirrors his own untethered, declining existence. Rather, to those stirred by his smallest transgressions. The ones just big enough to be felt somewhere, somehow, yet still too miniscule in all he’s done to be brought to memory. 

He will die somewhere quiet, somewhere alone. Dance in a pleasant slumber while his body flakes into ashes, sparks into white flame, or whatever else. A deserved fate, yet one not nearly harsh enough.

The plan is in his grasp, a mere untipped domino away. But time won’t permit him to go much farther from here. It never does.

He has cleaved the councilman’s head enough times to decorate a metaphorical castle wall, each taxidermied mount a broken link between Gabriel himself and God. It is unbearably heavy, his own unsupported body. Yet he drags it to the coliseum regardless, if only to yet again soothe the people with the unlit eyes and agape jaw of an imperious fool.

As always, their applause comes to the most abrupt of stops. As always, just as he’s about to leave and do something about his mounting guilt, the coliseum is gone. The rest of heaven along with it.

Again, the organ. Again, the towering cathedral. Again, the chromatic wash of red on everything from the floor to the ceiling.

He does not need to turn around to know it's there. To see which shadows compromise its boxy frame, and how each dark pane symbolizes its obvious, programmed intentions.

Is he doing something wrong? Is there a grievous error in his plan, one that’s making time loop around in frustrating circles? Are his sins too grave? His repentance too inconceivable for the universe to allow?

And if the universe isn’t at fault, is this the machine’s retribution?

Rusted metal against smooth marble: footsteps. Fast. Impatient. More efficient than they’d been last time and the time before that — exponential. Soon, Gabriel hears that click. That steadfast, deadly sound, universal across the machine’s ever-expanding arsenal.

It’s been too many times to be phased by the device pointed at him. Whatever the machine has in its grasp whirs; a rhythmic, dangerous invitation. Already, Gabriel can taste the coppery sputter on his teeth; feel his chest plate fracture inwards and stab between his ribs; hear that sweet, deafening ring that peaks alongside world-tilting ecstasy. 

He swallows hard, anything to curb the temptation. The machine stares expectantly all the same, its fluorescent iris that same drawing yellow.

He mustn't. He cannot. All fighting the machine has done has cemented him in stasis. Culprit or not, attempting the same thing and expecting any change would be insanity. 

A holier reason: indulgence is gluttony, and gluttony is a sin. Whatever that word means anymore.

The other vice indulgence brushes up against is also a sin, but it can’t be that. Not towards a machine.

“You can descend farther without contest. There’s more for you down there, machine.” he offers, displeased with having to barter Hell’s remaining population around; they are people he’s coming to realize, but the machine will not see reason lest there’s blood involved.

It stares blankly at his shoo-ing hand, unbudging in its confusion. If Gabriel had any easily definable features they’d be twisted in a scowl. “You can understand me, can’t you?”

It nods.

“Then leave. You’ve had your laugh. My defeat,” my tantalizing, thrilling defeat, “—doesn’t satisfy you, hasn’t been.”

Regardless, it does not budge.

“A whole world down there — yours for the taking! Throw that insatiable hunger at those who will reciprocate it, not me!” His hands gesture about in exasperated motions.

Still, that persistent gaze. At its apathy, Gabriel whines.

When Lust’s denizens broke at his feet, stuck between one world of pain and another world of tortuous winds — winds that for so long had felt like the gentlest breeze — did they feel this same helplessness? This sinking, crushing feeling of being trapped in a situation?

Airborne or grounded, he towers over the machine. And yet, he is still so terribly small.

What he does next is humiliating. Blasphemous. 

The machine flinches as he kneels. 

“Please,” a whisper against the plating of its legs. Then, more to himself than anything, “I need to make this right.”

His helmet rests against its midsection, impossibly smooth iron against corroded steel. Its wires vary in size and segments. Gabriel tries to hear the static and blood pumping throughout them. Wonders, sinfully, how hot both can get. Does the machine burn for him, as he does it? Can the entropy of a system equate to ecstasy? 

From this angle and despite the dim lighting, there’s a glare obscuring the machine’s optic. Not like its face is indicative of much anyway, but Gabriel wants to pretend that it’s in thought. 

Airborne or grounded, he towers over the machine. And yet he peers up at it bashfully, like he would to God.

For the first time since he’s met it, the machine chooses mercy. 

He does not realize it at first. He thinks the hand that cups his chin, then lifts him up is a sardonic gesture, a mockery to end all mockeries. Just as he objects to being gently walked to the center of the room — courted, — the machine raises a finger. 

You can decipher meaning without expression or words, he’s learned, so long as you know your subject enough. What the machine means to say is ‘just one more.’

Gabriel’s laugh is a breathy, ugly thing stuck between frustration and anticipation. They’re both in their places now, slot in position like actors in a play. Already, he can feel the unfurling of his being. The white-hot spikes of pain that blear the corners of his vision the same color. What about the machine makes temptation, something he’s resisted for eons, so alluring?

What’s one more?

Ironically, unsheathing Justice and Splendor is an act of surrender. With no lips to speak of, the machine takes a hold of his hand again and leans down. Its optic is warm, like a kiss should be. Then it steps away, the reserves of its gentleness assuredly dry. Gabriel doesn’t know what he likes more; its unthinking and brutal programming, or its occasional, endearing deviancy.

The courtesies are over, the machine takes aim. He’s been missing that muzzle.

There is blood and there is pain. There is divinity and there is parodied humanity. There is Gabriel crying out loud enough to tumble the heavens and quake the Earth. There is the machine and its searing heat sink on the precipice of eruption. There is love.

He towers over the machine, dwarfs it. Outshines it in every possible category. Has more grandeur, glory and honor than it can even begin to compute.

And yet.

The fight is won. The victor, obvious. The machine looms over his limp body, like one would a squashed but still moving bug. All Gabriel can muster are shallow breaths against the cathedral floor, life a mere bullet away.

The machine’s iris jolts from one corner of its optic to the next. It kneels over him, straddles him, a sick curiosity tied to its every move. Gabriel winces, convinced for a moment that even if its promise meant anything, it was overwritten by some vindictive line of code. When the machine puts its revolver to the side, his hacked shoulders go lax.

For a while, he and the machine are all that is. It cups his jaw again, rubs circles onto his helmet, tells him he’s so good and deserving and capable of redemption, then promises to never leave.

When it’s gone, he realizes too late. The stars and trees are back. Far away, he can hear the crackling of fire. He drags himself to it, hopefully for the last time.

u/iheartpancakes42069 on r/ULTRAKILL:

guys i swear this isn't a mod but if you play through 6-2 enough times in a row there's a cutscene??? thankfully it didn't affect my time but holy shit this game has so many easter eggs... is gabv1el canon now?? hakita?????

u/fuckmykappachunguslife_2

Definitely a mod, lol. How much did you pay Gianni for this?

u/fuckmykappachunguslife_2

Wait what the fuck

u/iheartpancakes42069

2.5k words, ~10 minute read sexual themes, implied child abuse ao3 ver here.

Cold spring winds breathe against the mosaic windows and push spits of rain onto their rainbowed panes. The soft pitter-patter is a pleasant backdrop to Father Robert’s echoing voice. A distraction, rather, from the vaguely ancient way he pronounces his Es and Os, as well as how he sounds too proud for a supposedly humble servant. As he picks at his nail folds, Lee keeps his eyes glued to the altar despite the floor being safer.

A pew can fit seven people without being crowded. He’s made sure of the number. Seven people, no more and no less. West Virginia is more of the same: the men sport bushy moustaches, the women wear floral a-liners, and his agemates carry around identical dolls and figurines. Weight and height aren’t a spectrum, but a few select categories. It’s seven people. Seven.

In his pew, there are nine: the Johnsons — a family of three — the neighbourhood postman, him, his sister, and his brother are seven. Mother, whose pregnant body doubles her size the same way it doubles the length of her days, accounts for the extra two. There’s a dull sheen to her eyes and a permanence to her scowl. Two things you shouldn’t come to church with, Lee thinks, then swats the thought away before she can hear it. God forbid she hears it.

Maria leans onto him as a consequence of Gavin leaning onto her, as a consequence of mother, her belly and her bags. The Johnsons and the postman are even more weight. All together, Lee isn’t too far off from being squished to a pulp. He imagines a finger underlining Father’s words, and then tries to visualize the verse he’s paraphrasing as vividly as possible. Which is to say, not at all. The arm of the pew digs into his shoulder, and what little color his mind gives to Jesus instructing the disciples fades with a wince of pain.

Every time he looks down, a garbled lecture screeches from a dark recess of his mind. He shoots his head up before the jagged words can cohese themselves. ‘Disrespect’, the worst thing in the world, is always among them. Always look people in the eye. Turn the other cheek. Don’t talk back to me, I gave up everything for you. Never speak vainly. Don’t question me. Don’t give me that look, I gave everything up for you.

Worse than the lectures are the choir sat in the corner of the church, who are now up and singing notes too loud for Lee’s liking, all without a warning he hadn’t been paying attention to. They are to rise, commands Father Robert. Then fall, then kneel, then rise again. Song, prayer, commentary, repeat. 

Each hymn reaches a crescendo, and he can neither do the ‘ear thing’ or the ‘hand thing’ to cope. He isn’t to look odd, he isn’t to draw attention to himself, and he isn’t to be improper. The rough linen of the kneelers bites into his skin, and he isn’t to let it disturb his prayer, which itself is to be directed to mother and his siblings exclusively. He is to remember every word of Father’s insights and recite them later. To speak is to believe, and mother won’t raise an atheist.

He tries to remember the sentence Father uttered moments before, and arrives at a blank. Just then, he shoos every other thought away — all the screaming discomfort and silent dread — while hoping it was nothing important.

Before the discord of stimulation reaches its apex, Father announces a brief recess — an act of unbeknownst mercy. Knowst, if it’s actually God watching over him as an apology for the times he’s failed to. No, refused to. His Highest doesn’t fail, nor does he make mistakes. It’s a bittersweet fact.

Hurriedly yet monotonously, he asks Maria to ask Gavin to ask mother to go to the washroom, and darts out of the pew before he can get the thricely agreed upon ’okay’. He’d rather this be the crime mother bemoans on the ride home, since she’s silently accepted the lack of lilies and daisies in his speech. Which isn’t to say she likes it, but rather knows it’s an immutable trait, one of the few she’s given up flogging out of him. Is it right to be thankful?

A hermit crab escapes from the hustle and bustle of the shore and into the deeper, quieter continental shelf. He waddles along the sea bed and feasts his eyes on the coral. A cool, long-awaited peace settles over his exoskeleton. 

The lobby is gargantuan, as is the rest of the church, but Lee manages to find a homey corner to retreat into. It’s a ledged window that sits right across from the bathrooms, which grants him some plausible believability. It’s too small for him, the ledge, but he’ll take it. He dangles his legs, laxes his shoulders, and fishes a pamphlet out of his pocket. There’d been a shelf of them on the way by, settled alongside posters and newsletters. He’d stood there, feasting his eyes on the coral, wishing the color would bleed out of all the paper and leave vibrant splotches on not all of life, but the bleakest parts of it. To be the people in the pictures or to have what they have — Lee is fine with whatever comes first.

The people in the pamphlet all brandish smiling, laminated faces. On the first fold is a picture of a bumbling child who, on the following fold, appears slightly older and slightly wiser. From left to right, different people model her coming of age. Headings and text bodies surround each stage of her life, all emphasizing the importance of keeping God within it. God, who’ll be there through trial and triumph. God, the guiding hand in a world of loops and turns. God, who you pray to when you just want everything to be okay again.

The last fold is of the girl, now a woman, at an altar. Her white dress sparkles underneath distinct, honeyed lighting, and her marbled smile has all the happiness in the world. Her husband-to-be is a suited, sturdy figure, and Lee finds himself sitting up to mirror his posture. The cathedral and everyone in it bends to their union; their new, open door; the purpose they’ve built together, for each other. It’s wonderful. It’s everything.

He’s yet to come out of a wedding with more than appreciation for the food, and that’s only if it fits his limited palette to begin with. Somehow, this extravagant ceremony layered with rudimentary filters, fitted in a one-to-one box and plastered onto glossy brochure paper is better than anything he could ever attend.

Love is a giant shrouded halfway in the clouds, but Lee can still see its feet. With that limited view, sitting on that window ledge, one hundred miles deep in coal country, he dreams for the very first time. For the very first time, there’s something worth dreaming about.

Along the way, he has more of them: dreams, hopes, and ambitions; all lights in a perpetual darkness that are so faint and spread out he stumbles along their path. However, none of them dethrone coming home to his ‘somebody’, twirling her around, spooning her in bed — and so on — in the safe confines of marriage. He wonders if she’ll like the ocean. He wonders what she’ll name their kids. He wonders if she actually exists.

She doesn’t, but they certainly do.

Angel isn’t a woman, so they can’t be his wife. They aren’t a man either, so they can’t, more controversially, be his husband. Their identity is something unfamiliar, something alluring.

They circled ‘Mx.’ on their medical intake form. Their eyes light up when Lee refers to them with the correct set of pronouns, in accordance with his sensibility training. Their short hair and baggy clothes tip the spectrum one way, while their voice and mannerisms lean toward the polar end. They’re baby blue and pastel pink mixed into a cherubic lilac. No, scratch that, they’re more like an ophanim: intricate in body and mind, as well as privy to the parts of the universe opposite to Lee’s lived experience. They’re wonderful. They’re everything.

Even before their smile stopped being a rarity, he developed the habit of taking it home. 

Pennsylvanian evenings are a warm and auburn upgrade from his childhood’s muddy skies and comparatively cool weather. On the drive home, as responsibly as possible, he’ll gaze out at the withered maple trees both stippling the horizon and sliding past his windows. With relative difficulty, he’ll imagine their happy face bristled by their wind-swept hair, as well as their fair skin and the shade it takes on under the clementine sun.

They’ll lounge in his mind as he parks in the garage, careful to avoid his friend of eight-legged death along the way. They’ll make his usual, processed dinner taste even duller as they prance about with stars and circles bursting at their feet. They’ll point out a fact about amphibians while he watches TV, one he doubts they actually know.

They’ll follow him upstairs to his room, wings a-flutter and body glistening that lovely lilac color. They’ll hover over him as he unfastens that distinct panel in his wall, tugs on that particular rope, and walks towards that unseemly wardrobe door.

Cold, slender fingers roll against his neck and shoulders, applying the right amounts of pressure on the right parts of his upper trapezius and deltoid muscles. His hypothalamus starts the domino release of feel-good hormones, the names of which escape him. The endor-somethings zipping from one neuron to the next egg him onward, but not as much as their cooing lips against his ear. It’s alright, they mummer, you need this.

At the other side of the wardrobe door is their shrine. It's a primitive collection of discreetly taken photos and nabbed trash, with lavender candles as the cherry on top. If he wants to continue stepping foot in here, he can’t make it any more elaborate than this. Shame takes on many voices, and this one isn’t loud enough.

The candles center a picture frame that he, as always, grabs immediately. However, as always, he lingers before leaving. His eyes helplessly tack onto the crude collage, his gaze glued in place by every grainy photo taped onto the walls. Even through the eye of decade-old security cameras, the sight of them is anchoring. He wonders if they know how much of a cognito hazard they are, and how debilitatingly they’ve wormed into every facet of his miserable life. Probably not, and the fact makes suffering from their exposure all the better.

He steps out of the wardrobe with the usual questions on his mind: What does it mean to sin anymore? And whatever the answer is, does it matter? 

Does anything matter when they’re beside him, kindly ensuring there's nothing wrong with indulgence as they toy with his belt buckle? What is he to think as he leans onto his mattress, and they encourage the savagery of spitting into his hand and rustling off his undergarments? Can he think when their sweet nothings confiscate his world and his morals, then proceed to push him into willful debauchery? 

Again, as he closes his eyes and lowers his hand: It’s alright, you need this. 

Together, if the weather permits it, they’ll spend Saturday evenings outside.

After invertebrate-watching and some backyard maintenance, they’ll both lounge on the bench he’s been meaning to build. They’ll each pick apart their respective weeks; Angel’s slightly eventful, scattered summary will contrast to his incident-free, point-by-point synopsis. They’ll touch on friends, family, and work. The world at large, if it proves to be more or less disappointing than usual. Eachother, if the mood calls for it.

When a peaceful silence settles among them both, they’ll retreat into their individual knacks. Angel will scribble onto paper whatever comes to mind, and Lee will flip through a book he’s already read before. A radio stationed on the bench and next to their dinner will sing to the tune of suburban news and inoffensive garage rock. When Angel hums along to weather forecast jingles or melancholic lyrics, Lee bounces his foot to their rhythm alone.

Halfway into finishing their food, their drawing, or both, Angel complains about being cold. When twenty minutes of snuggling against them proves futile, it’s time to head inside. Together, they‘ll pass walled art and planners tacked next to one another in silent solidarity. They’ll watch his tapes. Cable, if that’s what Angel prefers. They’ll sprawl against him like he’s a second couch, and he’ll happily accept the role. When they begin to ramble tiredly about their woes, their dreams and everything in between, he listens like he’s being told secrets to the universe. 

He‘ll carry them to the master bedroom just as they begin to fall asleep, endeared by their faint, half-conscious murmuring along the way. He’ll tuck them under the weighted covers, then slide beneath it himself. There — in their marital bed, in their marital room, during one of the many moments in their marital life — they’ll both lie, ready to do it all again the following morning. 

He’ll be doing this again, too. Trembling with ragged breaths. Scrunching his eyes. Bathing in equal amounts of guilt and pleasure as the seams of his fantasy come undone. There’s a wholesome freedom to it; loving someone for the first time, then letting that love take leaps and bounds instead of caging it away. His heart takes an increasingly crooked path each day, however, and he’s twenty miles and an ocean too deep to turn back. Thrill rips down his spine, sick and sharp, as he defiles the frame in steady bursts. He’s pathetic. He’ll do it again tomorrow.

His world takes a minute to stop spinning. In the meanwhile, he rests his head on his pillow and counts the boards of his ceiling. They loom over him with a smile bordering on being impish despite their halo and wings. They tell him it’s alright. They want him to get worse.  And worse he gets.

Despite all odds, they arrive on Friday. The light in their eyes is back for the most part and, unlike the week prior, Lee doesn’t feel like he’s talking to a shell of a person.