This Artificially Separated Half

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

[Daniel Ozanne continued from Disavowed Anger In The Face Of Evil]

Something drew Daniel away from the snowfield and into one of the tents outside the broken cabin where Robin once lay. Maybe the unsheltered snow was softer than he deserved - he could still die from hypothermia sleeping in a tent. Maybe he was too selfish to die in the unmarked wilds, where nobody would find him.

He went to sleep, hoping he wouldn’t wake up. The air whistling through the broken glass cried “Robin!” in Taylor’s voice.



Daniel sat in the pew of a church on a Sunday morning, Bible open in his lap. A droning sound carried over them, the priest rambling on about something or another:

“...our condolences… we shall pray for… may his soul be at ease… turn the page.”

His fingers took the corner of the page, but stopped before flipping it over. Why was he here? He never went to church. Mom never took him there, yet she was next to him on the pews, head bowed, hands folded in her lap. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. He squinted - he couldn’t read her eyes.

The droning stopped. Someone was sobbing, at the very back. Daniel looked up. His eyes and the priest’s met for one moment.

“You,” the priest called. “Read the next line.”

He looked down again, and looked over the next line. Ezekiel 343, it declared. Yes, he could read that. He raised his head and opened his mouth. No, wait, he did the thing where he memorized the center, but he needed to remind himself of the beginning. He looked back down to the page.

…that wasn’t what it said. He lost his place - 33? 34… that wasn’t the chapter number. He blinked. “Eet ths scrll” so ate ad honey tast ing.

The sobbing continued, and it was coming from more places. He looked to his side. His mother was staring right at him. He looked up. The priest was staring right at him, waiting. The whole congregation, from the pews and the altar, stared and waited.

His throat felt dry. The book weighed as much as a brick in his hands.



He remembered the time he found it under his mother’s bed - he could only reach one hand under it while pressing himself to the floor, to drag it into the light. It was dusty, the hard cover stained with coffee rings, and had a creased notebook sitting on top of it. Daniel put the notebook on the floor and opened the Bible up, idly flipping through it, not really reading anything, just… looking at it. Some of the ink on the pages inside was blotted and blurry, and the margins were dotted with handwriting, mostly illegible.

He knew what a Bible was, of course, but he’d never read it. Once he got handed a little pocket-sized version by a neighbor on his way home, a lady who often asked him how his day was, generally tried to strike up a conversation like she was in a suburban block in the 50s. He put her gift in his pocket, and when he got home, put it on a coffee table, figuring he’d look at it later, but probably never. It vanished from the coffee table a little while after. Later that evening, he saw his mom throw it in the trash.

“DANIEL!” came a shout from the bedroom door. Daniel, twelve years old, eyes wide, looked to the doorway where his mom stood. She stomped over, her next words were-

She grabbed his arm, pulled him to his feet, and practically pushed him out of the doorway, half-sobbing “get- get OUT, don’t DO that!”

He hurried away, as he was clearly being told. Behind him, he heard a faint, hissing, “Little shit!”



Okay okay, in hindsight everything that happened on those two days was perfectly logical. Daniel understood now that the neighbor who gave him a pocket Bible was a Jehova’s Witness, and even mainstream Christians think they’re kind of out-there. He understood now that his mom being so upset was more about him going through her things than any desire to shield him from the Bible specifically.

It would annoy him while he was awake, that this was replaying in his head. It painted the wrong picture of his mom. She wasn’t usually like that, he swears - that was the only time she ever insulted him or grabbed him like that. She would have wanted to be remembered more fondly, especially now. Surely, she would have taken it back if she could. Surely, the act haunted her just as much. Surely… his waking thoughts were fleeting and gave way once more.



Daniel thought he was awake when he mindlessly took the blanket from his pack and draped it over himself, but he was not. When he woke up, he pushed a much softer blanket off himself - he lay on the wide ledge of a window, looking out on a hospital parking lot.

He remembered the view, actually. Not from his own experience, but a photo. Once - and just once - he searched up the full name of his father, Sebastian Ozanne. He found a facebook page. It was from the right place, Saint-Nicolas, but it wasn’t inconceivable that it could be someone else with the same name, right? Like, he never mentioned an Elaine, for one. Or anything about his spouse. But then, he found a post of the view out from a hospital window, with a blanket-covered wide ledge in the frame.

“View from the hospital. Staying for a while for my son’s birth.”

He checked the post’s date. May 31st, 2003.

Suddenly, he recoiled from the window, only to bump into something behind him. It rattled. He turned around. There was a hospital bed, where Aion lay surrounded by flowers in glass vases, head covered in bloodied bandages. He was asleep, smiling slightly, and his breathing was rhythmic, more seen and felt than heard.

He looked on Aion’s face, and remembered a conversation with Aion, or more accurately an argument. Aion’s mouth remained tightly closed, but Daniel could hear his voice echo. Even this was soothing.

”It’s overrated and the characters were fucking stupid!”

”The point is that they’re stupid! The kids are doing dumb high school romance shit and they’re still acting smarter than the adults!”

It was soothing, at first.

”High school romance? Isn’t Romeo like, way older than Juliet? Who’s like 13?”

”Why does everyone assume Romeo is an adult? It’s OBVIOUS from the text that he’s also considered youthful, and…”

Daniel watched Aion’s chest rise and fall gently. And watched. And watched. He watched until his hand balled into a fist and the motion became unfathomably irritating, like the bastard was smirking at him, and Daniel had absolutely nothing to say in his defense.

Aion was dead. Aion was breathing. Aion should be breathing, but in some ways, he shouldn’t be.

Daniel was dreaming. Daniel was alive. Daniel should not be… just shouldn’t be.

His hands lunged for Aion’s throat, because surely nobody here should be breathing and maybe if he clawed this dream up from the inside everything would just stop.

Amidst the choking and gurgling-



Daniel woke up in the cabin, no blanket covering him. He looked around. It was still bloody, and it was still dark. He left his bag and his gun behind, and made his way to the church in town.



Inside the church, it was also bloody and dark, except for the candlelit altar past all the pews, illuminating the figure of a girl covered in a blue shawl, who Daniel had never seen before. She kneeled with her back to him before the altar, which towered over her, covered in sculptures and candles. He could just barely make out her whispering, so he ventured closer.

The closer he got, the statues came into clearer view. Their faces were twisted with agony, and they reached up past the flames of candles burning all around them. There’s the virgin Mary, he thought. And there’s some of the angels from the Sistine Chapel or… wherever he first saw them. He stopped right behind her, looking upon each face in the flames. He could hear the praying girl’s words clearer now.

“All that is good, noble, fatherly… true! But the world… something else besides… ascribed to the Devil…”

Daniel looked to the figure right in front of her. The statuette looked like a mass of geometric shapes, attached to one another at slightly-off angles. Yet there was something angelic about it, like it had a halo around its “head”.

“...no objection to God, far from it…” the girl whispered, as she tapped the floor beside her. “...consider everything sacred… a service for the Devil…”

She stopped, and glanced pointedly at him.

After a pause, Daniel accepted her invitation, and knelt next to her. He didn’t fold his hands or pray, but looked at her face, trying to figure out where he’d seen it before.

“...otherwise create for yourself a god that contains both.”

“Amen,” they both said.



Daniel thought he was dreaming when he thoughtlessly put a blanket over himself, but he wasn’t. Or maybe he was? It might have been both. He didn’t remember, exactly. The dream’s details were slipping away from him quickly, without anywhere he could write them down, but that was okay. He felt… calm? He breathed in deeply. On some level that felt wrong, but his heart wasn’t racing, he didn’t wake up in a cold sweat. There was a pit in his stomach, but it had settled. It no longer screamed. Now it was just heavy. (It whispered but he was unwilling to hear.)

Maybe he should head to the church in real life? There was one on the island, he recalled. He didn’t believe in omens or portents but maybe this was a sign. Of something. Anyway, the sun wasn’t up yet, so there was no harm in staying here and waiting, and nodding off yet again.

Maybe this time, he wouldn’t wake up.

(And so the cycle starts anew. You shouldn’t be feeling okay.)

(You should be as disturbed as you were yesterday.)

(Stop delaying what needs to be done. You are going to regret this.)

[Daniel Ozanne continues through the evil world]