Azazil ran as the clouds above the old city swirled and the first rains of the monsoon began to fall

He walked out the small home with tears in his eyes. He knew why. He knew exactly why he was fascinated by the child. His nostrils were starting to clog up with that most acrid of fumes. As if someone were sprinkling mountains of black pepper into them. The calm before the storm. The sniffling before the waterworks. He knew exactly why he was fascinated by the child. He’d always known. He hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself. But something had happened. And now he did. And that Pandora’s box was now wide open. It hurt. Like fuck. He had been that little boy. Not exactly. But the parts where it counted, yes. He had had a mother. He had had a father. He had had a sibling he had absolutely adored and wanted to protect and care for all his life. And then-

Deep breaths. In through his nose. Out through his mouth. He hadn’t told anyone. All who knew were dead and long gone. Including her. And he probably never would. He had a sudden, inexplicable urge to go tell the child. In the darkness. The boy would never know who was sharing these details. He had never heard azazil’s voice. It wasn’t an inexplicable urge, he thought to himself. He was human after all. He desired companionship and someone to understand him. But when he had lost the only people who could, he had dug into his work, and dug into his head and buried those needs. He had dug into his work with vigor, freed from the prisons of being in a human mind, and he had excelled. He was part of the upper echelon of humanity. The one whose existence they could speculate at but never comprehend. The ones who existed above the stratified air that these people walked. But so high, it was easy to fall. These days, he enjoyed the tightrope act of benevolence and bringing pain. He thought he was doing a humanitarian deed. And no one knew. No one needed to. He was doing it for himself. But months of wearing himself down like this, and he was raw and red. And the boy. The boy had been the trigger. Those memories he had buried were crawling out of their grave. And they had not died from lack of air in all these years. They had feasted on the nutrients in the soil of his mind, and now they were stronger.

Deep breaths. In through his nose. Out through his mouth. He started to run. Faster and faster. Bathing through people. Who started from confused and mocking him as he ran. For they could not comprehend what it felt like to use one’s feet to run. Just for its sake. They ran enough from the horrors of the world. And as he ran faster. His mood got better. Those he barged into got progressively angrier. They began to shout at his back. He smiled. Azazil ran as the clouds above the old city swirled and the first rains of the monsoon began to fall.