The Oculus Nest is a tomb built of compressed wood-ash bricks in the basement of a decommissioned hospital. It is inhabited by a daemon whose body is shaped like a 2-meter-tall simulacrum of a human eye, and her name is The Perfect Truth. The Perfect Truth is often visited by those who wish for their souls to be purified, in a ritual known as Perfect Account.
The steps of a Perfect Account are as follows:
First, The Perfect Truth witnesses the participant, their body and soul and history all laid bare before her perception.
Second, The Perfect Truth writes an exhaustive list of the participant's sins in a light blue, poisonous ink.
Third, The Perfect Truth burns the paper on which the list was written and scatters the ashes in the lungs of the participant's enemies.
Following the completion of a Perfect Account, the participant's soul loses its ability to interface with the participant's prior sins. Of critical importance, however, is that a Perfect Account is not guaranteed to work and can be made to fail by certain conditions:
First, if the participant's lungs contain ash from a prior Perfect Account.
Second, if the participant is the sister of a dead insect.
Third, if the participant believes a Perfect Account to be a violent process beyond its usefulness.
Rust coughed. She did that a lot these days. Her lungs emitted a tiny burst of ash, but without enough force to fully expel it from her body, so it returned to its original location.
The only light in the hallway was from Rust's phone's screen, faintly illuminating the walls around her. Every 5 meters, like a physical clockwork, a small sign hung from the ceiling that simply read "RADIOLOGY" with no further information. After passing under a seemingly endless number of these signs, a door faded into view on the right-hand wall.
"Found you."
Rust smiled. She didn't do that often, but she made an exception for the occasion. The door in front of her was locked, guarded by a numeric keypad and bearing a piece of paper reading "BLESSING - TEMPTATION - REDEMPTION." The numbers etched into the cold metal keys glowed with a sickly blue light.
Rust coughed again and reached a hand toward the keypad.
503769
The lock clicked open.
The immediate sensory onslaught confirmed that this was the right place: the sound, quickly alternating between high-pitched clicking, indistinct whispers, and noises resembling heavy machinery, all without obvious sources; the smell, a combination of blood and underbaked bread; and the light, blindingly bright and harshly glinting off of an array of metal tools and furniture adorning the room. In the center of it all stood The Perfect Truth, who turned toward Rust after a few moments.
"Ah, someone new! Are you here for my services?"
Rust took a step forward and coughed weakly.
"Yes, that is correct. I am here for a Perfect Account."
"Great to hear! Do you need me to explain anything about the process to you before we start?"
Rust shook her head. "No, I understand how it works."
The Perfect Truth would have smiled at that, if she had a mouth. "Then let's begin."
Rust felt The Perfect Truth's gaze lock onto her, meticulously combing over every inch of skin and hair. The Perfect Truth briefly flinched at a few stages of this process, not expecting to find certain scars or bruises and equally not expecting how beautiful those things were. The daemon's perception eventually reached Rust's face, caressing her mouth and nose before gradually, gently, softly pressing though to her throat, her larynx, her trachea, her bronchi. Perceiving further was difficult because of all the ash, but it was still necessary for the Perfect Account to proceed.
It was not unlike watching a wild animal walk directly into a trap set by a hunter.
Rust inhaled suddenly and sharply, pulling The Perfect Truth's perception deep into her lungs and burying it in ash. The daemon tried to pull her perception back to her body, but the ash was unimaginably thick and Rust held her breath in an effort to hold everything in her lungs in place as tightly as she could.
The Perfect Truth kept fighting, but quickly realized that she was in a futile position. As she tried to think of a way out, she felt Rust's thoughts echoing through the air:
"This ash in my lungs, it was put here by you. You implanted it in me on behalf of countless people who I have never known, poisoning and suffocating me as eagerly accepted collateral damage in their quest to erase their own histories. And now you get to feel, firsthand, the way the ash envelops everything. The way it poisons even time itself. The way it NEVER ENDS."
Then everything went dark.
Rust awoke in the middle of an empty parking lot with her clothes on fire.
The Perfect Truth coughed. She would do that a lot in the following days. She had managed to free her perception from Rust's lungs by forcibly pulling and absorbing the ash into her own body. This would likely hinder her ability to perform Perfect Accounts for a period, but being a daemon allowed a gradual expulsion of the worst of it.
Rust awoke again. She was no longer on fire, and she was now lying on a couch next to a low table covered with an assortment of plants. An old woman was seated in a chair across from her, intently examining a flower Rust didn't recognize.
"Good, you're awake. Are you hurt?"
And some questions have no honest answer.
The Perfect Truth sighed, then looked at her client. "Alright, the list is complete."
Mercy.
Mercy.
Mercy.
Purity performed incorrectly.
Purity wielded against the pure.
Mercy.
Mercy inflicted upon a dead insect's sister.
Honest mercy inflicted upon a dead insect's sister.
A flame appeared in the air, flickering every color but most of all a beautiful shade of deep blue.
"Don't let that last one happen again."
The flame grew, burning away the history of mercy and salacity hanging in the air.
"The Perfect Account is complete. You may leave any time you want."
I once felt a love so sincere that I failed to remember who I was before. I once felt a love so warm that I failed to recognize how useful it was.