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<sup>[source](http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/16054713/images/1314259621791.jpg)</sup>
*<sup>[Part 1](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-1)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 2](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-2)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 3](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-champion-of-the-little-people-part-3)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 4](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-4)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 5](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-5)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 6](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-6)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 7](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-7)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 8](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-8)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 9](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-9)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 10](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-10)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 11](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-11)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 12](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-12)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 13](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-13)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 14](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-14)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 15](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-15)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 16](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-16)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 17](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-17)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 18](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-18)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 19](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-19)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 20](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-20)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 21](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-21)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 22](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-22)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 23](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-23)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 24](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-24)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 25](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-25)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 26](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-26)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 27](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-pariah-of-the-little-people-part-27)</sup>*
I recalled that I’d cut Jennifer out of my heart for this. For Heather. I fell to pieces, dry heaving. I betrayed Jennifer for this. For this! My throat grew hoarse from screaming, but I couldn’t stop. My voice just grew more and more strained. My throat burned. My tears now felt like acid.
Everything I’d worked so hard to rebuild within myself finally imploded. Irretrievably. Ground into the finest particulate, not so much as two intact pieces left to nail to each other. Nothing but ash and embers. I couldn’t remember who I was. My ridiculous fantasies of being loved now returned to mock me, circling around my body like Heather and her friends.
Why did I ever believe anybody could feel that way about me? What is there to love? I brought this on myself by believing life could be good. That something pleasant might happen for once. That I deserve to be happy.
I started digging. The rain still pounding my back, I scooped handfuls of mud to one side with the intent of excavating a grave to bury myself in. The rain made the soil pliant, but I didn’t get very far before my fingers started bleeding and I had to stop.
I slid off the mask, then bashed my head against the ground over and over. Hoping to cave my skull in. But the mud was too soft. Small rocks embedded in it gashed my forehead pretty badly, but I couldn’t feel it. Drowned out by something immeasurably worse. The rain at least washed the blood away.
I eventually got up and resumed trudging in the direction I thought I came in. Didn’t really know, but didn’t care. “Either I’ll die or get home” I thought. One’s as good as the other. Any attachment I ever felt to my own life had completely evaporated. About a mile down the road I realized the rain was now warm.
I should’ve been shivering, but wasn’t. The frigid wind also died down. Just the rain now. Big, fat droplets of warm rain battering my face, chest and shoulders. I tasted one, and to my surprise, it was salty. The crone’s tears, I thought. She must’ve seen the whole thing. As if to confirm it, thunder sounded in the distance.
I played with the idea of walking the other way. As far from civilization as I could get. To survive by scavenging, or to at least die peacefully amidst beautiful wilderness with no ogres for miles in any direction. But there’s no getting away. There’s just too many of ‘em, and no mirror big enough.
Eventually I came upon a gas station. A pump attendant approached me, asking if I was alright. My head still swimming, it took some effort to remember how to speak. “I’m...alright. I’m not hurt.” He asked about the forehead gashes. “It’s not serious. I just need someplace to wait for a ride.” It seemed to satisfy him, at least partially. He still looked concerned, but went back to work and let me be.
I called Dad. He badgered me with questions about why I needed to be picked up so soon. I deflected them all and begged him to just come get me. I sat on the curb under the harsh neon tube lights and reflected on everything. I was at least cogent now. Able to think. But not to feel. No matter how hard I tried, that fuse seemed to have blown.
I stared out into the darkness. Imagining countless glinting, bulbous eyes staring back. It no longer seemed like such a tragedy that the Tyrants would soon destroy all of this. So much of it is garbage, so little is worth saving. I felt fucked up. No better way to put it. Just irreversibly, horribly fucked up and broken.
Not properly sad anymore, or even angry. Just grey. A dull, repetitive continuum of greyness. No reason to care, to feel. No reason to try. When Dad finally arrived, he too was shocked. “I must look like a truck hit me” I thought. A glimpse in the fold-down mirror on the drive home confirmed it. Wet, black hair plastered to my scalp and face. Deep cuts in my forehead now starting to scab over.
He asked if I’d been in a fight. If Heather did this. I told him she didn’t. Technically true. He eventually figured out I didn’t want to talk about it after I silently endured the barrage of questions for a good ten minutes or so. The windshield wipers worked double time keeping the view clear as the storm outside grew ever more violent.
I caught myself wishing it would never stop. That a cleansing downpour would submerge monster world, washing away the ogres. A miniscule, barely audible voice within me protested. As if angry that I’d succumbed to something it once had under control. Long gone are the days when that voice was the dominant one, replaced since then by something profoundly ugly.
I showered when I got home, but couldn’t get warm. However hot the water became, my insides felt like cold, grey concrete. I dialed it back a bit when I felt as if I might pass out. There’s no washing it off. Not that easily.
I didn’t bother to put anything on, just sprawled out on my bed. Staring at the ceiling, mind racing. Working backwards, step by step, in an effort to figure out how I arrived at this point. Where I’d taken the first wrong turn. Was it the gift? No, her friends must’ve been lying in wait before I got there. Did I say something to upset her in the days prior? Nothing from my memories jumped out at me.
My eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. I could make out the corners of the ceiling, shadows of a swaying branch outside the window cast against the far wall by a street lamp. I thought I saw movement. I expected fear, but nothing stirred in me. Eyes lazily searching the shadows in every corner for any sign of Tyrants, I silently begged them to appear.
“Come take me” I thought. “I’m ready”. The shadow of the branch continued to gently sway. Nothing emerged from the shadows, however I welcomed it. Of course not, I realized. That would be merciful. Hours passed as I simply lay there, eyes open but unseeing. Heart beating, but unfeeling. Lungs continuing to draw breath only because I didn’t care to stop them.
Mr. MacGufferson crawled out of his drawer, hopped up on the bed and curled up on my tummy. I felt twisted up inside. Pinched, contorted, without a way to reach in and fix it. But I had to admit, the rumbly little lump now slumbering on my stomach did help somewhat. I closed my eyes and focused on the rhythm of his purring.
Cats just know. Probably the same way the little ones do. It did the trick and before long I was out like a light. The exhaustion probably didn’t hurt. I found myself drifting in a cold, black abyss. Distant clusters of lights floating past all around me, as well as lone stragglers. As I watched, the loners flickered, then went out.
The clusters proved more resilient. But these, too, were extinguished bit by bit until only pure darkness remained. Up ahead, a sleek shape drew near. Glistening, but difficult to discern as it was as black as the void around it. Once close enough I discovered it was the sword Katerinka used that night. The Poison of Sorrow.
It rotated silently in place, as if inviting me to take hold. I looked around. Endless nothingness in all directions. Nowhere else to go. Nothing else to do. So I made the only choice available to me, and grabbed the handle.
The cold did not vanish, as such. Rather, my own body temperature fell until it matched that of the void. Discomfort vanishing with it, as a differential no longer existed between the two. I felt mild pain as I succumbed...but then blissful numbness. A welcome absence of sensation, after a lifetime of incessant pain. Surely it’s better to be this way?
Then a sharp pain in my hand. I tried to release the handle but found I couldn’t. The thorns extended into my hand, in actuality the sharpened tips of black obsidian tentacles, now burrowing deep into my arm. In a panic I flailed about trying to jar it loose, but I’d already crossed the threshold.
The tentacles just kept working their way into my body. Past the elbow. Past the shoulder. Writhing, slithering, wrapping themselves around my bones and organs. My entire arm now appeared to be a living mass of shiny obsidian tendrils. Bulging as I flexed, having taken the place of muscle.
My fear intensified as the process gradually consumed the rest of my body. Until it enveloped my head. As soon as it finished converting my brain, all fear subsided. Seemed foolish ever to have felt that way. I’d been right to begin with. This is an improvement over how I was. Nothing soft and warm left. No living tissue means nothing that can be wounded. Nothing that can die.
Only stark, cold, hardened obsidian. Absolute purity of being. And with it came purity of purpose. I now spied Earth approaching in the distance. It grew and grew, until I found myself descending to the surface. The sword now fused to my hand, an inseparable part of my body, it sought out the nearest population and began to kill.
Not because I felt any anger. There was nothing left capable of feeling. I’d become something like a machine, which simply performed the only function it could. How they screamed as they fled, sounding to me like the baying and bleating of barnyard animals.
I wrought destruction and misery wherever I went, wreckage and gore piling up around me. No weapon tried against me prevailed. No barrier succeeded in excluding me, or even slowing me down. One foot in front of the other, in front of the other.
Even as shells and rockets struck me. Even as my body was engulfed in flame. Eventually, I always reached their hiding places. Looked upon their terrified faces without empathy or remorse, then extinguished them. As they did to Tyler.
Along the way, masses of Tyrants grew around me. Drawn to my presence, feeding on the wake of fire, tears and corpses I left behind. Draining the blood, that they might further increase their numbers. I felt no allegiance with them, our goals just happened to intersect.
I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to. Though I didn’t want to. I didn’t want, period. Desire was now alien to me. I wasn’t doing this of my own volition. Not for any reason. It was simply happening. Something I couldn’t not do. Like my mind had been reduced to dominoes. To a Rube Goldberg machine with only one possible outcome.
I trudged onward, climbing mountains of bodies, walking across the bottoms of oceans in search of anybody I missed. Finally, I came upon a scavenger. Wearing a hooded cloak, too busy picking up scattered books and paintings to hear me approach. I seized it by the neck.
It screamed until I tightened my hold on its throat. Slowly it turned, writhing frantically, until I could see the face beneath the hood. Katerinka. Beautiful, pale features soiled with soot, dried blood and grime.
She grabbed and beat at my cold, glistening obsidian arm as I held her aloft. I saw fear and hatred in her eyes. Tears formed, then rolled down her filthy cheeks. I hesitated for only a moment. Then continued to tighten my grip.
I awoke nauseous and coated with sweat. I sat there naked for a while, contemplating the dream. Holding my head in my hands, I pictured Kat’s terrified face as I choked the life out of her. The ultimate absurdity! I’ll never hurt her, I thought. No matter how far I might fall.
There was a knock on my door. I called out that I wasn’t decent, got dressed, then opened it a crack. Dad reminded me that today was Tyler’s memorial. “No time for breakfast, I overslept. I’ll be in the car.” No complaints, I thought. I couldn’t imagine keeping anything down in this state of mind.
It grew worse on the ride to school. My insides just turned over and over on themselves. Churning, swirling, as they usually do when I sense danger. What danger? Traffic was sparse, the car was comfortably warm inside. Something just felt wrong. One of those things you can’t nail down.
When I arrived, the gym was jam packed. Preparations were not yet complete, so I wandered about the school grounds for a bit, taking note of who all showed up. In the process I realized I was searching for somebody. Memories of her terrified, dirty face the only part of the dream that didn’t fade. Growing more vivid, if anything.
I really wanted to see her right then. Difficult to articulate why. To make sure she’s alright? I don’t think so. It was only a dream after all. The little voice which lost control of me long ago was now feebly pushing me to seek out Kat for some reason. A single ember, the last one not yet snuffed out.
This time I trusted it, and approached a student I recognized to ask if he’d seen her around. “‘Sup monkey boy, lose your banana?” he chuckled. I cringed but ignored it. “Have you seen Katerinka?” The gangly ginger pointed me to the bathrooms. “She’s in the girl’s room as usual.” Before I set off in that direction, I asked what “as usual” meant.
“My sister says she goes there and cries. Just sits by herself in a locked stall, bawling her eyes out. Then she dries her tears and returns to class like nothing happened.” I asked him if his sister knew what Kat cries about. He gaped at me. “Come on dude. I know you believe we evolved from rocks or whatever, but nobody’s that stupid. She cries about you.”
About me? She must really be worried. The little voice denied it. No, not worried. Then what? Offended? Anxious? I eliminated each possibility one by one until I reached the only remaining option at the bottom of the list. Placed there as I felt it was by far the least probable. But, having ruled out everything else…
My stomach sank as I considered the implications. It can’t be, can it? I must be reading the situation wrong. If I approach her and I’m mistaken about this, I’d make a fool of myself. Much too late anyway, even if true. Much too late after what happened with Heather.
There are so many confusing ways to hurt people. Without meaning to! Without even realizing it’s happened. I wondered how many people I believed to be intrinsically cruel, indifferent ogres have trampled me without meaning to. It’s not like I say anything about it most of the time. I usually just stew internally, or run off and cry somewhere they can’t see me…
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*<sup>Stay Tuned for Part 29!</sup>*