Worship and Ruin

My fingers twitch.

But... I’m not the one doing it. I just watch them, helpless, fascinated.

Twitch, twitch, twitch.

I no longer have the will to move my own limbs; just look on as something invades me from the fingertips. My palms are still pressed together in prayer. I want to run but I cannot even make myself stand.

I watch my fingers wrap past themselves and my hands clasp each other, gripping tightly. I feel a pressure building. Some part of me is fighting; some element of my subconscious rejects this, pushes my hands together, tries to keep this foreign thing from moving beyond them.

It fails.

My hands explode apart with a force that levers me backwards. Had I not already been on my knees I would have crashed to the stone floor on my back. Instead I face the ceiling for a moment, arms outstretched as if I am beseeching the heavens.

My arms twitch now. They flex of their own accord. No, of some other thing’s accord; some other being’s intent. My own hands reach for my neck. Gripping. Tightening. Squeezing.

I choke. I am beyond affecting anything, but my body spasms, fighting on, gasping.

A shudder goes through me. My body slews sideways limply. I drift, cast loose.

I feel detached, emotionally and physically. It is strange, looking at my corporeal self like this, from the outside. I look mirrored, when of course I have only ever seen my mirrored self. This is what I really look like, how everyone else sees me, my Elise and little Cam-cam.

I watch myself stand. I, my body, reaches out and steadies itself on the altar. Whatever is in me is not used to a human form. It strokes the cracked onyx of the altar and smiles a wicked smile. I don’t like that smile, there is no warmth in it; I fear that smile, I don’t think my face ever looked like that before, so ugly.

I watch my body walk away, across the broken stone and through the doorway. I try to follow, but I feel dazed and so very tired. Something stops me short. I look back and see a dark chain linking me to the altar; it seems made of curling, black smoke with flickering red veins. I test it, but I know it is unbreakable; it was forged to hold a far worse thing than me.

I do not feel the urgency I expect to. Maybe that is a part of this place, part of these chains, or maybe passions flow in the blood, the body, and I have neither anymore. I do feel an ache for Elise, I would warn her, but how can I?

This church was not the place I was promised. I may never know whether I was deceived or whether I simply lost my way in the woods. I lie down on the cold stone; I can still feel that, at least. I look up past the skeletal roof beams to the pearly moon and I wonder if perhaps who you worship is not as important as where you worship... or what may answer.