by Lila Huff
Dedication
For those who feel lost in the everyday
Table of Contents
Dedication
1. Afterlife
2. Demon
3. Comatose
4. Training
5. Mother
6. Shadow
7. London
8. Qualms
9. The First
10. Reaper
11. Mistakes
12. Rage
13. Episode
14. Defection
15. Convictions
16. Salvation
17. Siris
18. Ramifications
19. Reckoning
20. Death
21. Regrets
Epilogue: Christmas
THANK YOU!
COPYRIGHT
1. Afterlife
-Joellen-
It was simple enough, he bit me and I died.
I no longer felt the teeth gnashing at my throat. There was no pain. No fear. I felt no agony. I felt nothing that I had expected to feel when I died.
Death was beautiful, serene, and I wanted for nothing in the black oblivion that surrounded me.
I was at peace.
Floating in the nothingness, I felt my body spin in soft circles, spiraling downwards into the abyss. Time no longer held meaning. The black enveloped me and I began to forget who I was – why I was. I had often pondered nirvana; could this be it?
I explored new senses – I could only faintly remember their counterparts from my life – these seemed stronger, more vivid, and I began to use them to probe into the darkness of my surroundings.
It was quiet around me, a faint dripping noise and the muffled tones of a piano were all I could hear. I doubted I would have been able to hear it in my life, and yet the notes rang out clear in the darkness around me. It took me a moment, but I recognized it: Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor. The melodic tune drifted through the cocoon-like darkness covering me and I felt the spinning slow to a gradual stop.
Perhaps I was in Heaven; that might account for the sound of my favorite sonata. It would also account for the peace I felt. But it seemed too dark. Wasn’t heaven supposed be puffy clouds and pearly gates?
Perhaps I was being reborn. I didn’t believe in reincarnation, but I’d been wrong before. Parents played classical music for their unborn children… if I remembered correctly. But I suppose that if I was once again a fetus it would be warmer. That was a strange thing about death: the cold.
I heard the sonata coming to its end and the unseen virtuoso began to weave the tune toward a transition. The song slowly changed, transmuting into a quicker, angrier melody I did not recognize. The sharp dissonance of the notes stung at my ears, and I wished desperately that I could shut out this new, violent melody.
But if I am dead, would I have ears?
It was at that moment, during that thought, that I began to feel the trickling of a liquid – warmer than the ambient temperature – on my hand. My thoughts automatically connected it to the dripping noise I heard. The rhythmic drops on my hand began to annoy me – like an itch I couldn’t scratch.
Do I still have hands?
The darkness of my surroundings slowly lightened to a soft red and I realized that I was seeing the light through the thin sheath of my eyelids. It stood to reason that if I still had eyelids, then I probably still had all of my other anatomical parts too. The soft light was painful, as though I had a headache.
Pain?
It didn’t seem fair that there would be pain after death. Maybe I wasn’t dead after all. Maybe I hadn’t been killed by my attacker. Maybe I hadn’t even been attacked. Perhaps it had simply been a horrendous nightmare.
I lay there for a few more minutes as the annoying trickling liquid formed a warm pool around my body and the angry piano continued to pierce through what had once been the peaceful silence of death. I tried desperately to remember how to open my eyes, such a simple action shouldn’t be so hard.
“Joellen.” A voice to my right echoed. Although a whisper, it sounded like the blast of a megaphone, and yet, it did not hurt my ears.
My eyes fluttered open reflexively to the name – I now remembered it to be my name – and I was nearly blinded by the dim light of the room.
Strange, I thought. Why was it things had completely flip-flopped from my life? How was it that the dim light through my eyelids felt like staring at the sun and a whisper, that felt like someone was screaming in my ear, did not hurt at all.
“Where am I?” I managed to rasp out as I shut my eyes to keep from blinding myself. “Who are you?” Annoyed by my haywire senses, the words came out much rougher than I had intended.
“I am Father.” The voice said calmly, as though that simple explanation should answer every question I could possibly want to ask.
It only served to dredge up more.
My father was dead.
Did that mean that I was dead as I had originally thought?
I no longer felt dead. Death would be quieter. No one would bother me in death. But then again, he did not say he was my father. The voice had said it as though Father was his name – or perhaps his title.
I opened my eyes once more, squinting at the light and trying to focus on the shape next to me – the one that called himself Father. Everything shined too brightly. I tried to blink through the rays of light bouncing off the porcelain around me. It was not helpful.
“Shh…” The voice said and I heard the raspy staccato noise that came involuntarily from my throat. It was somewhere between a scream and a sob, but without the volume of either. “You’re going to be fine. You’re not dead, and this isn’t Hell.” The voice boomed, though he still whispered. “Your senses will adjust.”
For some reason, I could not trust him.
His face was surrounded by a mane of brilliant light, as though a thousand watt bulb was placed directly behind him. The light filled the room and seemed to reflect from every surface. It seared through my eyes like hot pokers.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Was this Heaven after all? The man sitting next to me looked like an angel. No, that wasn’t quite the correct reference. There was something evil in the beauty of his face. Although his features were perfectly proportioned and angular, his face had a cherub like softness. There was an evil that lurked in the set of his smile. All of his angelic qualities were marred by his eyes. They were like nothing I had seen before. His irises and pupils were vacant, deep pools of the blackest void. They held no hint of the smile that graced his face.
“Where…” I attempted to ask my question again, but I couldn’t organize the thoughts that were colliding tumultuously in my head.
“You will have more questions my dear, and we will answer them all – in due time – but we’ll have enough of that.” He assured me with that same smile that did not carry to his vacant eyes. “Time.” He clarified with a chuckle that was as beautiful as it was menacing.
I felt him pat my hand, but I couldn’t look away from his face. It was as though the void of his eyes was a black hole threatening to pull my soul from me and I was unable to turn from them, though I knew I should. There were answers behind those eyes I had not thought of questions for, and their emptiness terrified me.
The blinding light shifted and he held it up between us and with a small puff of air, blew it out. The room went dark. Oddly, I could see better for the darkness, and I watched the man who had called himself Father leave, placing the doused candle on a table by the door.
A candle.
The blinding light that had flooded the room and wreaked havoc on my eyes was from the small flame of one cand
le? I asked myself questions I knew I could not answer, and so I searched for answers that I could give myself. Where was I? I might not be able to determine a state or city, or even a time, but I could try.
I looked about me now, the angry concerto still audible as I observed my new surroundings. It was a plain room, the walls were paneled in mahogany and the floor was tiled in a dark slate. The only light entered the room was from a small window up high in the wall – covered with a grate. It gave me a view only of the silver stars embedded in the velvet black of a night sky. I was curious as to why I could see so well without a light source. That was an answer I knew I would not get now.
As I looked at my hand, I now recognized the warm liquid that was pooling around me: water. The tepid liquid flowed freely from a pewter tap in the wall above the porcelain basin that I’d found myself in. I peeked over the edge. It was a claw-foot cast-iron tub set against the wall. I turned the knob on the faucet closest to me, stopping the water.
I observe myself, covered in a strange film. It clung to every portion of my exposed body, like dead skin, yellow tendrils began to float away from my arms and legs. I ran my hand over my arm and the filmy substance pushed back as though it were a latex suit: a second, yellow, rubbery over-skin.
I spent close to an hour pulling the film from my body, the film on my hands came off almost like a pair of latex gloves – there were only holes where my fingernails would have been. I felt around with my foot until I found the small knob that was the top of the drain cap. I pulled up on it, bringing up a pewter disk the size of my hand.
The water and second skin washed quickly down the drain.
A robe hung on the back of the door Father left through and I quickly put it on. I was still unsure of my surroundings – or the people in it.
The door in front of me was a challenge. I didn’t know where it lead and I not comforted by the idea of entering an unknown room, full of an unknown number of people, in nothing more than a bathrobe.
The door itself seemed innocent enough. The wood was dark – foreboding in the mahogany tones that allowed it to blend into the walls beside it – and tall. I had never felt short at five feet five inches. But, then again, I had never, in my twenty two years, encountered a door that stood over twice my height and was only the portal to a bathroom. It seemed more fitting of a cathedral or a mosque.
I took the knob in hand. It was ornate, huge and, like all of the other fixtures I had observed in the room, pewter. It turned noiselessly, allowing the click of the catch releasing to be clearly audible in the echoing bathroom. I let the door slide open and looked through to the dimly lit room. It did not hurt my eyes as badly as it had before, but the three candles in the room still sent audibly vibrating streams of light toward me. It was as though I could hear the light. What was wrong with my eyes?
I stepped cautiously out, not daring to make a sound. A feline grace seemed to have taken over my movements for me. It was as though my joints had been rusted before and were now fitted with a new set of ball bearings, allowing my movements to carry me in to the room silently.
an enormous – sumptuously dressed – bed,
There were three doors. One on the opposite side of the room from the one that I stood in front of, I assumed this would lead me out of the room and into the main portion of – well, whatever this place I was in was. The other door was several feet away along the same wall – a closet perhaps.
I walked to the bureau. Empty. Not a scrap of clothing. I shut the last drawer angrily and I heard the piano pause briefly before picking up again. The song was a light melody now, not as angry, but I felt as though the anger from the piano had been transferred to me. I stood up staring dejectedly at the empty bureau for a moment, cursing it for its lack of clothing, and then moved to the other door along the wall with the bathroom. It was just as tall. I opened it and peered into the darkness. A closet, I was correct.
Luck! A gown!
It was the only thing hanging from the long rack that spread back several meters into the darkness. It was much more ornate than anything I had ever worn before and I hesitated for a moment. I’d kill for a pair of jeans, but it was better than a bathrobe.
I usually didn’t wear all black. With my long black hair it tended to make me seem slightly gothic, but beggars can’t be choosers. I quickly traded my robe for it, thankful to find undergarments piled neatly on the shelf above.
I zipped up the side of the dress – amazed that it seemed to fit perfectly, as though it had been tailored just for me – as I returned to the main portion of the bedroom, blowing out the candle on the bureau as I shut the closet door. I didn’t need the light to see. There was no point to three candles. My toes sliding through the thick pile of the carpet.
“Father wants to talk to you.”
The man’s voice rang out in the silence. In the split second before I turned to see the owner of the new voice, I realized that the piano’s music had stopped. He was seated in one of the chairs – lounging with his legs draped over one arm – as though he were bored.
He was probably only two or three years older than me, but he looked odd, perhaps it was his immaculately tailored three piece suit, perhaps it was his dark hair and pale features; perhaps it was simply the aura he exuded. I couldn’t be completely sure what it was that made him seem so out of place, but there was an air of sad elegance about him. It seemed like I was in an entirely other place and time. He seemed more able to fit the profile of a Victorian gentleman – there was only a hint of the twenty-first century leisure.
“Who are you?” I asked, startled by his abrupt appearance in the room.
In the few seconds that it took him to answer, I compared him to the only other person I had seen since I had been attacked in the alley way. He looked extremely different from the man he called Father. The only thing close to being similar were his eyes. They too were the deep black. But unlike Father’s they shimmered in the darkness, sliver flecks in the black, like a universe of stars. His eyes had life, they were not void.
“My name is Demetrius,” he said without looking directly at me. “I wouldn’t advise that you keep Father waiting, Joellen.”
“It’s just Jo.” I’d had to clarify that small point for the vast majority of my life. The only one who had used my full name was my grandmother, and she had died several years ago, since then the only reminder of my full name had been my driver’s license and passport.
“Well Jo.” He said the shortened version of my name with a slight sneer. “I guess you can call me Dem if you want.”
I could tell that Demetrius didn’t like me. It was evident in his tone; he was annoyed by my very presence. His relaxed manner was a charade. I could tell by the rigidity of his shoulders and his unwillingness to look directly at me. What’s more, he was scared of me.
I laughed before I could control it. It was a strange laugh – foreign to me, darker than I had heard from myself before – but somehow I enjoyed it.
“I will call you what you wish to be called.” I tilted my head to the side. “And I think you prefer your full name.”
Demetrius didn’t say anything; he just stood and walked to the door. His entire body became rigid when he turned his back to me. Why was this man scared of me? I smiled at the thought, amused at the absurdity of it.
A strange wind rustled through the room, and I could have sworn I heard the words, we’re waiting.
“We need to go.” Demetrius seemed agitated now, and I could tell that it was not my doing. “Father will be… unpleasant if you dally much longer.”
He opened the doors and the light of the hallway seared my eyes. There were sconces every ten feet. Each one was a taxidermied head from an animal of the Cervidae family, I saw several moose and deer heads, their antlers replaced by pewter candelabras.
“Appetizing isn’t it?” Demetrius asked, a sadistic smile coming to his face. I suppose my face was holding a bit of a sneer now.
“Not in the least.” I contrad
icted. This place that I was in was beginning to seem like a hall of horrors. At least that’s what it seemed like to me, a devoted vegetarian for the past fifteen years.
He just continued to smile, his black eyes narrowing as though there was a joke that I was missing.
The halls were all a dark stone; I could barely make them out from the glare that bounced from them. It was as though every crack between them was a chasm, spewing that vibrating light. The floor was the same slate tile as the bedroom and bathroom had been but it was covered by a long red runner – vivid in every fiber.
I tried to focus on Demetrius. He was the least glaring thing in my environment at the moment, and so my eyes hurt the least when I was looking at him.
“Why is he called Father, Demetrius?” I asked, hoping that my guide would be forthcoming.
He just laughed at the question, and then turned to me as we walked. Taking in my expression, a realization dawned on him – it was evident in his face – and a smile parted his lips as he squinted one eye. “You really don’t know?”
I looked at him blankly. Know what? Why should I know who he was? “Is he a priest?”
The question received a snort. “Not in the least.” The face of my guide softened now, as though a preconceived notion had been the only thing causing him to harbor ill will toward me and he was now moving past his initial conceptions.
I could tell that he wasn’t going to divulge his information outright. “Then a physician?” I asked, it would explain how I was still alive when I had been certain that the savage man that had attacked me had succeeded in killing me.
“Nope, you’re cold.” He laughed as he said the words, turning around to walk backwards down the hall. He stared openly at me, like someone staring at an animal they had never seen before as they stood behind the fence at the zoo. His smile was a mixture of awe and wariness.
“I’ve never met a convert that hadn’t known Father at least briefly before hand.” He looked at me appraisingly now. “You are a finer specimen than most he’s brought in.”
