Title: Playing God

Summary:The blood painted snow like a blank canvas in the midst of creation, suddenly a display of something terrible and god-like. [Eric Cartman centric, but through Stan's eyes. D: T for blood and gore.]

AN: As I was trying to work out (my interpretation of) Eric's psyche's status in scientific terms, I began considering his character's usage of God in relation to his mental imbalance (which I generally attach to malignant narcissism-- that, if you're curious, ties deeply into my one-shot Atomic Bombs-- and megalomaniac tendencies), and the end result was this thing. On that subject, this is the first time I've really had any interest in writing in present-tense, so bear with me should it suck. ( . . . Also, yes, I need things to explore other than religion, but whatever. XD; )

Ew. That's all I have to say on the matter, other than the typical disclaimer, which you all already know. (To clarify, they're about seventeen here.)

Sanguine oozes at the broken, sliced angles and tendons, snaking across the cracked pavement and frigid against the snow; it climbs up the fence and weaves with the splinters, the taste of iron a backdrop and the fetid scent of corpses festering beneath afternoon sun the foreground. The limbs shudder as they are kicked away and the mauled, gaping organs weep fluid when left abandoned.

Kyle looks on, eyes bulbous and unaware, as if he can't grasp that anything could color his entire world in blood. Eric flicks his wrist dryly in greeting, stretched gloves ugly with death and gore, and Stan tastes the bile as it chokes the air from his system in pseudo-suffocation.

"Hey fags," he's saturnine, but not indifferent, "No time like the present." When there is no immediate answer, he crouches to the ground and wipes his hands cautiously on the snow, but the cloth remains tinted an off-brown. "Goddamnit. I didn't think it would fucking spray-- well, not like that."

Stan shivers in the cold and watches as Eric pulls them off with distant composure, blood painting snow like a blank canvas in the midst of creation, suddenly a display of something terrible and god-like.

"Cartman," Kyle manages shakily, Eric forcing a turn of the head to answer his stare, "what the hell is this."

"I wouldn't worry about what it was," he says prophetically, and Stan's stomach lurches in the feeble, living pit of his guts, his eyes tracing patterns in the carnage.

"What the fuck were you doing, Cartman--" he growls, the tone dangerous now, but Stan finds no voice to support him, sick with light-headed realization.

"Is that . . . Kenny?" Eric's gaze flickers upwards to meet his, Kyle whirling on his heel to examine the splatters of dying orange and crimson thrown across the pavement. He hears him sneer "the hell?" somewhere beyond the butchered mass, sound a high-pitch scratch, and ice water seems to drip down Stan's sensitive neck, the abrupt Colorado chill unbearable.

There is a lapse of contemplative silence on Eric's part, and their phantom wisps of breath become the only disturbance, ". . . Why not. Kenny dies every other day; I just made it come faster." Kyle goes pointedly rigid, lips pursed in the aftermath of repulsion, and he balls his fists, pressure churning the skin to a ghostly sheet-white. Stan does nothing beyond attempt to register the shock, unable to break his eyes from Eric who shrugs and makes no effort to mask his apathy, "He was really easy to kill. A couple well-placed blows and his neck-- the spinal chord, you know?-- shattered. I was hoping he would put up more of a fight, but he always was a damn pussy. Ah well."

"Why," Kyle strings the words together, knowing the answer, "is he torn up?"

"I was wondering," he begins, gathering himself, "what if I cut him into pieces? Would he come back? The lucky bastard never dies-- 'grant me life eternally'. What is he? Poor and stupid, yeah, but immortal? Shit, then he's god, and he doesn't deserve it." The sunlight, sharp and pervasive, blurs the scene into a spin-trip of different shades, and Stan feels his caged screams struggling against the quiet. He wonders if Kenny will be back tomorrow to remember it, like a branded man, and if Eric will respond in tow, curious to kill him again because he can. In a broken loop, he curses the predictability of it all, and finds there is no irony in human behavior other than society's willingness to overlook it.

His breathing is strangled, but he doesn't fall comatose and cringes as Eric drones on in a mad man's reminiscence, "But he really bitched and moaned-- you'd think he'd be used to it since he dies and all."

When Kyle says nothing, Eric takes it as mutual understanding and nods his agreement, "It'll be sweet when he comes back; I'll ask him what it felt like playing god." Things spiral to total isolation, as if the rest of world doesn't exist, and, eyeing his jerky hands, Stan waits for a blow that never comes. He surprises him then, passing in a rush of motion, numbed and blank faced as he cracks beneath the fear. Stan wonders if he's unsettled because there is no fixing real death, and Kyle considers himself the one who builds his group and his reality back up. Feeling tremors grip and shake him, he wishes he could manage his legs, but doesn't move.

Eric observes, heaves a sigh, tosses the dirtied gloves haphazardly away, and then he smiles, slapping Stan heartily on the shoulder as he exits.

AN: Poor Kenny. D: Despite that this is labeled complete, something makes me want to expand on this plot (as a whole, whereas I usually just want to add to the narrative), but Eric's absolute eccentricity is a turn off; I'd be worried about Kyle (although perhaps not for the reasons you would think).

. . . But I might consider it nonetheless. (Ah, and review, please? :D;; Sorry if it sounds a bit rushed.)