Hero - Python

Is it a sin to be a coward?

Is it a sin to fear? Is it a sin to break apart? Is it a sin to pity? Is it a sin to agonize?

Because, if so, then I am the world’s greatest sinner.

I know nothing of God. I know nothing of his territory or his reigns or his words or his actions or his creations. I know nothing of Him, except for the plain fact that I know he is not real. A good God wouldn’t allow his people - his own children - suffer. A good God wouldn’t allow murder or disease to roam the plains of many lives. A good God wouldn’t allow misfortune rob us of our happiness. A good God wouldn’t sacrifice health for power. A good God wouldn’t let things happen the way they have happened. A good God wouldn’t.

A good God doesn’t exist.

I like to think that me and Lilith are the closest things that the kids have to look up to as, well, God. We feed them, we shelter them, we defend them, we protect them, we love them. Isn’t that what God should do for me us them? What has he done for them that benefits their lives, their well being, their happiness? They know nothing of him, either - and I won’t let them. I won’t let their pure naivety get the best of them. I won’t let their disappointments ruin their youth. I won’t let their mind put in trust to someone - something - unreal. I won’t.

Half of the house has been salvaged - most of that half hardly touched by the smoke, let alone the fire. The other half is completely destroyed - black, charred remains of our former lives replacing it. My room went down with the flames, but I hardly care because Lalia’s room is spared. She needs this more than I do, needs this stability to control her own flame within her. She deserves this more than all of us.

Lalia’s in bed, now, undoubtedly. I imagine her room, small and cluttered with abandoned hopes of fairytale endings hanging off the hinges of her broken closet doors and scraping up against the peeling wallpaper and tiptoeing across her creaky wooden floors. The floors which will become my “bed” for the next God knows how many months. The rain pounds hard against the glass of her window, and there’s a few particular spots in her ceiling where the water seeps through. She lays in her bed, tonight, huddled under the endless heap of scratchy blankets, clutching to the edges of it with tight fists while her eyelids clench shut. But, I know better. She will not sleep tonight.

Most of us will not.

I’ve already scrambled out of my own makeshift bed while Lalia tossed and turned in her own. I walked quietly and closed the door gently, but she’s smarter and probably already realizes that my presence is missing. The thought doesn’t shake me, though, as I walk down the lonely corridors of our former home, watching the old wood melt into black ash under my bare feet. There’s some parts of the roof that have been completely burned off, and the rain pours in and forms puddles between certain walkways that remind me of thousand of oceans and the dangers that harbor in it. I make sure to splash through the cold water when I do pass it, standing still for a moment while the rain soaks up the only articles of clothing I have left.

Maybe even if there is no God, there is still a devil, because my room became hell.

Black stains the floors and the walls and even the goddamn window. Where my bed once was, now is just a pile of ash set aside in one corner. My heart swells up a bit at the sight, admitting to myself that I wish I could sleep there for at least one last time. A gaping hole stares down at me from the center of my roof, and allows easy access to the rain outside. The water is freezing and cold and numbing but so, so, so refreshing, so, so, so much better than the heat I swam through today. I walk along the wall, skimming my fingers against the rough wallpaper, tracing along the designs and scratches that’s faded into it.

I’m not religious, I’m not a believer, I’m not God, but for once in my life, I truly do wish there was one. Because God could reverse this. God could undo this. God could make things better.

I punch my fist through the wall.

God could make things better, but he can’t, but he won’t - but he’s not even fucking here.

But I guess that's why we all need something to believe in, don’t we?