After the Sacrifice

  The altar was like a fountain of perpetual dripping blood. Kaar’s wife lay wasted on top of it as he leaned over her, staring into her lifeless eyes. Kaar offered his wife as a sacrifice for a promised life of peace, happiness and wealth, but it was only now that the fool realised that it was his wife that had gifted him a peaceful home, a genuine smile and the will to work for money. 

  Kaar was never trusted with those things again. Happiness had abandoned his soul and life became a struggle. Every dollar would turn into a bottle as soon as it touched his hand and he, like his wife, was wasted. 

  The thing that had presented itself as his friend had made Kaar blind to what he already had, and with enough time Kaar began to lust for those things. He began to hate others for having them. The jealousy shoved at his ego so much, so that when he noticed his happy wife living off of his wealth, he made the last few weeks of her life miserable. Then he ended it.

  As he was sentenced to death, Kaar cried and shrieked. He begged the judge for mercy, but his judgement didn’t sway. The wise old judge demanded for Kaar’s silence and then told him sternly, “I can not forgive you because it is not me who you have wronged. You may get your chance at mercy if you meet her in your next life.” Kaar once again began to shriek desperate nonsense at the judge, calling him entitled and a coward.

  In Kaar’s mind, it spoke again. It was the thing that Kaar called friend. “Do you want help?” it teased. Kaar, begged it for help as his head passed through the noose. But the thing snuck away in silence never to speak to him again and Kaar was hung. He left this life as the coward who could never hold himself accountable. His corpse was suspended before hundreds of people, as they celebrated his expulsion from their cured community. And the thing laughed from the shadows, as it watched the wretched soul which still pleaded and begged for its life, after death.