Mwana Asingacheme Arikugaya Horror.

there’s something unique about knowing you’re slowly decaying.

you’re going through a lot.

unlike the usual situation, it’s not from the inside. it’s all on the surface.

your core is solid. you know that much. so it could never really start from the inside.

but you can see it happening.

you just don’t understand it.

you’ve never gone through something like this before.

you’ve known pain before, of course. the kind you can point at. the kind with a beginning, a reason, maybe even an ending.

this isn’t that.

this is waking up and slowly becoming unfamiliar to yourself.

watching little pieces fall off while the foundation somehow remains standing.

and perhaps that’s what makes it worse.

if the whole thing collapsed, at least you’d know what to do with the rubble.

instead, the house is still standing.

just not quite a home anymore.

you can’t cry it out either.

you try.

nothing.

so a little tobacco smoke to dim the lights makes more sense.

not that it helps anyway.

it just makes the room harder to see.

and maybe that’s enough for tonight.

all the cards have been laid out in front of you for ages.

you know what they say.

you’ve always known.

there’s really only one option.

just one you never fathomed taking.

so instead of playing the hand, you pour a little something.

a little sip and suddenly all the cards look like jacks.

good.

now you don’t have to read them.

your mind can wander back to when everything was fine.

or at least to a version of the past you’ve edited enough times that everything seems fine there now.

funny how memory does that.

you can turn entire years into a warm room if the present gets cold enough.

so you sit there for a while.

smoke in your lungs. something warm in the glass. some old version of yourself playing in your head.

and for a moment, the house doesn’t look so bad.

the cracks disappear in the dark.

the paint looks fine from here.

you almost convince yourself you’re resting.

little do you know you’re just accumulating pain to the power of 5.

because tomorrow remembers what tonight forgot.

the cards are still there.

the cracks are still there.

whatever you refused to feel is still there.

except now it brought interest.

perhaps that’s the cruelest thing about trying to escape something that’s waiting for you.

you get tired.

it doesn’t.

so eventually you stop running.

not because you’ve suddenly become brave.

not because you’ve figured anything out.

you simply realise you’ve been travelling in circles.

and there you are again.

same table.

same cards.

same impossible option.

only now there’s less tobacco in the packet and less whisky in the bottle.

and maybe that’s when it finally clicks.

you were never confused about the cards.

you understood them perfectly.

you just didn’t like the hand.

there’s a difference.

so you sit with it.

no smoke.

no little sip.

no trip backwards to some carefully reconstructed yesterday.

just you and this strange, deteriorating house that somehow still has a perfectly good foundation.

maybe it can be repaired.

maybe some parts need to be torn down.

maybe the thing you’ve been calling decay is simply what refusing to let go looks like after enough time.

you don’t know yet.

and strangely, you don’t cry.

you thought you would.

after everything, surely there should be tears.

but there’s nothing.

just silence.

the kind of silence that would make someone looking from the outside think you’re handling things remarkably well.

if only they knew.

mwana asingacheme arikugaya horror.