Gehenna

Feels cold when blood leaves you when the strength that you thought inexhaustible abandons you leaving you tired and hopeless. You've never felt like that and you are scared.

You didn't know what fear was until now. Will you survive the uncertainty? The only thing that you see in your spent head is the road to Osorezan, that ancient sacred Mountain, the Fear Mountain, with its volcanic landscape, the intensive smell of sulphur, the barren and grey ground, with the hot blue water which steams and bubbles and blows from it.

It's the entrance to the afterlife with its peaks and the river crossed by the dead souls, like the River Styx. And you've thought that those things existed only in those thick and intimidating big books of passed chronicles. Are you about to meet Charon and his boat?

You start to see before yourself the souls of unborn babies and the dead children who cross the river build piles of pebbles along the riverbed and are attentively protected from evil demons, that will attempt to destroy those innocent piles to get the souls, by the sight of Jizo, the great Monk protector of children and travellers. The oni will try to eat those poor souls, but they will be defeated. Wait, are you seeing this or do you imagine everything in your tired mind?

But then you return to reality just as the last leaf is falling and you play once again the first lullaby for Noa, your beloved son who's about to leave you forever, and you cry because you don't want him to leave you, you cry because you are powerless. Here returns the feeling of fear and that awful sensation of you losing your grip, your convictions, your power.

The first lullaby is fading behind your ears, that sweet sweet tune that melts your heart and your barricades and when the second comes by it's hurting you even more now that you were already pretty beaten up.

The second lullaby for Noa, that you composed in your sleep was the most special for you and you fell in love with that immaculate and incommensurable smile. You cannot still believe that there is a chance that you're not going to see that smile again.

You went into the unknown to try and save him, and even the Abyss talked to you about hope.

You, a non-believer, you rowed against your belief and disbelief and went to a sacred place that you didn't believe existed, you found it even if it was hidden from the eyes of the ones like you, you passed the test that that ancient entity proposed you to survey your intentions and you succeeded in saving your son.

Yes. You did save your son. He was predestined to die, but the god, seeing your effort in going against everything you knew and accepted, decided to grace him and take him out from the clutches of death. Just cause it admires you. As the summer rain comes, your son will heal, the Abyss said.

Remembrance of Gehenna struck you. You do want to believe in the Abyss, but you are scared to do so, so you come back home traumatized. You need to grasp reality again, you have to leave the vessel of hell and chaos that you've become. You fill and empty a glass of water in a second and you rush under your shower and its cold embrace with all of the clothes still on. The cold water runs on you and through your confused mind. You calm down and go seeking the thing you look forward to the most.

You go running into your little son's room, get closer to his bed and poke his little nose. You sit and you tell your little star, waiting for the blessing to act, stories of moon and sun.

Inspired by the album Gehenna by Non-Somnia featured on the very well-known In The Woods channel.

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