Rise of the OtherGod Apostle: Not a Cult Leader, but a Serf?!
#078
#078
I might be able to wrap my head around ghosts, but devils are a bit…
Seojun stood there, facing the two girls who looked perfectly normal, but their wild claims seemed too far-fetched to believe. He couldn’t help but furrow his brow skeptically as they both insisted passionately that they were the one and only Doade.
The red-eyed girl stepped up, bold as brass, and shoved her pendant in his face. “What, you don’t believe me ‘cause you’ve only got one eye? Well, take a good, hard look at this! My grandma’s portrait is right there,” she challenged him. “With your two eyes – oh wait, I mean your one eye – look carefully! I’m the real Doade!”
Inside the locket was a miniature portrait of an elderly woman. The delicate brushstrokes captured a lady with a hooked nose, draped in pearls and a classic gown that left her shoulders bare. Her voluminous sleeves framed an ornate hat that contained her snow-white hair. As Seojun gazed at the portrait, his thoughts drifted to Christina, or more specifically, her grandmother Dolly, whom he had only met once. Her appearance had left quite an impression on him, given how extraordinary it was.
Was she some kind of actress too?
While he marveled at the intricate details of the portrait, the green-eyed Doade marched up to him. Her unique accent danced on her soft lips as she spoke. “Don’t fall for that impostor’s tricks. Look at you, all dazed and believing it’s lies!” She held out her palm, revealing a scar. “See this? I got it from my mother’s sewing machine when I was twelve. Father was so mad, but who knows if it was because I almost broke the machine or because I actually got hurt.”
The green-eyed Doade leaned in close, her skin as cool as the night air. A jagged scar peeked out from between her fingers. The red-eyed Doade, teeth clenched, gave her look-alike a shove. “You think I didn’t show mine ‘cause I don’t have one?”
Eyes locked in fierce glares, faces twisted with fury, the identical girls yelled in unison,
“Did you just push me?”
“You pushed ME!”
Their shrill voices cut through the air like knives, the sound of grinding teeth ominous and unsettling.
But proving their authenticity seemed to take precedence over their little spat. They unleashed a torrent of random quirks and major memories from their shared past. The red-eyed Doade put on a dramatic display, hands clasped as if in prayer.
“Oh my gosh, I so didn’t want to bring this up! But the truth is, after rolling in manure, I ate cake without washing my hands. But only ‘cause my stupid cousin threatened to devour it all before I could clean up!”
“You… you evil devil! How could you tell someone else’s most embarrassing moment like that?”
“Even if I rolled, it was ME who rolled, not you! You’re the one with no shame!”
The Doades tumbled to the ground, limbs entangled, wrestling like a pair of bickering sisters or someone freaked out by seeing their own creepy clone. No matter what they said, Seojun just wasn’t buying their bizarre tale. The red-eyed Doade, sensing his skepticism, let out an exasperated sigh.
“Still don’t believe me? I’m telling you, we’re not twins, okay?”
“Unbelievable!” the green-eyed Doade threw her hands up, her loose sleeves dancing in the breeze like delicate butterflies, revealing her pale, porcelain wrists. “You’re as stubborn as a mule, you know that?” She rolled her eyes so hard they nearly disappeared into her skull. “Fine, go ahead and try to escape this crossroads. But I’m warning you now, it’s a lost cause.”
With a dramatic sweep of her slender hand, blue veins standing out like rivers on a map, she pointed towards the distant horizon. Her finger landed on a pitch-black spot that seemed to swallow all light, a gaping void that threatened to consume the very fabric of reality itself.
“Hmm, worth a shot, I guess,” Seojun shrugged, deciding to take her up on the challenge.
Without further ado, he took off at a brisk pace, the cool night air whipping against his skin.
Guess all that running around in that damn cornfield until my feet nearly fell off is finally paying off.
Seojun had made every excuse under the sun when he tried to walk carefully before—his balance was off, he felt dizzy, etc. But now that he was running full tilt, his body quickly adapted to relying on just one eye. He clicked his tongue and absently rubbed his forearm.
He had no intention of ditching his truck or the certifiably insane girls claiming to be devils. He just needed to confirm something. After what felt like a good distance, he skidded to a stop and surveyed his surroundings.
“……”
Despite his long legs carrying him a considerable way, the landscape remained eerily unchanged. Strange. His eye twitched with unease as he glanced back, but the path he’d taken had vanished into thin air. It wasn’t like his vision was blurry or obscured by fog. No, there was a perfectly crisp boundary—an unnaturally flawless disconnection in the road.
He stumbled back, heart pounding in his chest. A bead of sweat trickled down his chin as an ominous feeling slithered up from below, coiling around his legs like invisible serpents, wrapping his thighs, weighing them down, chillingly caressing his chest. Seojun staggered, his worn sneakers scraping gratingly against the ground.
Eyes facing forward, he battled the rising panic within and propelled his legs onward. What began as faltering steps quickly exploded into a frantic sprint. Seojun’s lungs hungrily devoured air as his body swayed, resisting the urge to crumple. The hope he’d finally saw now flickered mockingly in the distance.
In that instant, something ignited deep inside. The blood surging through Seojun’s coiled muscles seemed to decelerate. The tempest of concerns swirling in his mind evaporated like snow under a scorching sun. Perspiration clung to his skin, but he paid it no heed. A crooked grin tugged at his lips as he bit down, his sprinting body feeling weightless, soaring like an eagle taking to the skies.
“What…”
Yet the sight that greeted him defied all logic – his own truck with the expressionless Doade twins standing before it. Emerald and ruby eyes drilled into him, their silence a thunderous rebuke slamming against his psyche.
This couldn’t be real. Seojun had undeniably walked a straight path, never deviating apart from that momentary pause. Encountering the twins here was absurd. It shouldn’t have been possible.
The color drained from Seojun’s face as he stared back at their ghostly pale faces. Were those flickers of resignation, derision, accusation, or pleading dancing across their features? If he could read so many emotions on their eerie faces, had he completely lost his mind? He swallowed hard, his throat as parched as the Sahara, and brushed past the girl and the devil, refusing to surrender so easily.
At the crossroads, he chose a different route and ran like his life depended on it. But as if fate was playing a sadistic prank, he found himself right back where he started – those pale figures mocking him, his truck parked smack dab in the middle of the road. Again and again, four attempts in total, all leading to dead ends.
Drenched in sweat, Seojun staggered to the center of the crossroads and crumpled like a discarded used tissue, his haggard appearance mirroring his shattered spirit. One of the twins clicked her tongue, the sound slicing through the uncanny silence.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to just trust me instead of exhausting yourself trying to prove the truth?”
Seojun shakily pushed himself up, his voice as rough as sandpaper. “So, uh, any chance you two are actually octuplets?”
“Oh, sure, that’s totally possible,” the green-eyed Doade scoffed. “A whole posse of eight, setting up this janky trap in advance.”
The red-eyed Doade chimed in, “Cut the crazy talk and just give the devil what she wants already. It’s your only ticket out of this mess.”
Seojun still couldn’t tell who the real Doade was, but one thing was crystal clear. Whether it was the devil or the genuine Doade, their personalities were equally insufferable. Tears streamed down his one remaining eye. In Wraithwood, the only unreal existence was alien Monster X from outer space. But what kind of twisted twilight zone had he stumbled into as soon as he left that place? First ghosts, now a devil?!
But like always, even when faced with a reality he couldn’t stomach, he eventually choked it down. Sure, Seojun’s heart was brimming with pettiness, arrogance, envy, and selfishness rather than humility, courtesy, and gentleness. But at least he kept up that outward facade. Seojun roughly wiped away his tears and snot with his jacket sleeve, eyeing each Doade in turn.
“Alright…If what you’re saying is true, then one of you must be the devil masquerading as Doade, right? And the real Doade is the daughter of the Bead restaurant owners, wears a locket with her grandma’s picture, sliced her hand on her mom’s sewing machine and got an earful from her dad, and rolled around in manure…Wait a damn minute.”
Seojun’s eye twitched as he recounted Doade’s story, his lips pressed into a thin line. He realized a crucial point while listing off what he’d heard.
The thing was, Seojun wasn’t even from Utahpia. So what was the point of Doade or the devil spilling all these details to him? How could he possibly verify any of the information they said when he was just a visitor trapped at the devil’s crossroads?
Perhaps from excessive stress, the empty socket where his right eye once resided began to throb with a vengeance. Seojun pressed the back of his hand against his eyelid and asked,
“Hey ladies. What happens if I can’t give the right answer or if I just get it wrong?”
The green-eyed Doade cocked her head to the right, a mischievous glint in her eye.
“Maybe you’ll become the devil’s new plaything, its personal chew toy.”
The red-eyed Doade tilted her head to the left, a wicked smirk on her lips.
“Maybe you’ll be trapped in this place for all eternity, doomed to wander aimlessly.”
Their light brown heads knocked together as they snarled at each other, teeth bared like feral animals. But Seojun couldn’t be bothered with their petty squabble right now. He threw his hands up in disbelief.
“What?? Why do I have to suffer that fate? I was just passing through, minding my own damn business!”
“Well, when you put it that way, it pisses me off too.”
“Who do you think wants to be stuck here, genius?”
Their words pecked at him like a flock of angry birds, attacking him for daring to say the wrong thing. Seojun, now a complete wreck, turned ghostly pale at the harsh consequences. His already fair skin became so ashen that blue veins showed through, a roadmap of his growing dread.
“Is the devil really that powerful?”
He didn’t mean for it to come out sounding so provocative, so challenging. Luckily (or unluckily), the girls responded with an eerie calm, glancing at each other knowingly.
“Who knows? Maybe it can snatch a human soul and toy with it like a puppet on a string, bending it to its twisted whims.”
“You’re saying some seriously messed up stuff. That’s probably what you were planning all along, isn’t it, you devil?”
Seojun’s face turned a sickly shade of blue, his stomach churning with a mixture of fear and revulsion. Either way, it meant the devil had the power to torment and mess with a person’s soul to a terrifying degree, a thought that chilled him to the very core.