by Lila Huff
Mike, I thought, great. I’d rather sleep through the rest of eternity than spend the time it would require to get answers out of him. I walked back down the dark hall, seeing my four reflections, and wondering if I would ever see the girl, who thought of me only as a brother, again.
“She’s a babe, isn’t she?” Mike said as I got closer to him. “I have never seen a human woman who could compare.”
“I didn’t really notice.” I said gruffly, I had noticed, but the evil she exuded was a greater deterrent than her beauty’s pull.
The lewd thoughts that were racing through Mike’s mind were evident on his face. He seemed content to be lost in his fantasies and I was more than willing to oblige him. Mike was probably going to be a thorn in my side for the entirety of my stay here.
“There you are.” I heard Jack’s voice from behind me. “I’ll take him from here Miguel.”
Mike turned to say something but clamped his mouth quickly shut. He just shrugged and turned down a side passage without a backwards glance.
“Ignore Miguel.” Jack said in an annoyed tone. “Everyone else does.”
I had to laugh at that.
“We call this place The Basement. It is our home and sanctuary, it may seem like a maze now, but you will soon know all of the intricacies of its corridors.” Jack hit me on the shoulder.
Learning the maze of tunnels did not seem like an easy assignment, but ignoring Mike was not a difficult task, as I would soon find out. I didn’t see many of the other Asakku for the first few months I was there.
3. Comatose
-Joellen-
The canopy of the bed became my only focus. I stared at it hoping that my thoughts would compel whatever forces were holding me to this earth to let me go. For a while I laid there only thinking, death, death, please give me death.
Destiny is a cruel mistress. I wondered how I had come to be the one who was chosen for this end. Had I betrayed fate in another life? What was her quarrel with me now?
The canopy ceiling gave way to a dusky sky, the purple velvet turning to a purple, moonless night. I didn’t know where the faint light was coming from, but I didn’t care. I was too depressed to care. I simply stood in the dark, utterly alone, waiting to die.
I heard the soft melancholy notes of the piano as they floated past me in the wind, and the canopy was back. I don’t know how long I had stood in the desolation that was my mind, but the subtle tones of the piano pulled me from my self-loathing.
I didn’t move at all, I did not even blink, but I could see Demetrius hunched over the keys in my peripheral vision. He moved slowly with the melody that wound its way up toward the higher keys and then slowly found its way back to the basso’s notes.
I closed my eyes with one last wish for death and the piano faded into the back of my mind until it was barely present. I opened my eyes again and was no longer under the canopy.
The sun shone down on my face as I lay in the grassy field. Faint movement to my left was the only clue that I had to any other presence in the pasture. I closed my eyes again and listened, the faint gurgling of the stream that flowed through the cleft in the green fields drowned out most other noises: the faint call of a Stellar Jay and the quiet lowing of the Jerseys, Holsteins, and Herefords that surrounded me. They barely broke past the laughing sound of the stream.
It was summer. That was the only way to account for the dry grass and the mildly warm weather. Rain was the mainstay for the quaint town of North Bend, Oregon, but I wouldn’t complain. This was a happy memory. It was probably one of the few summers that I had spent on my grandmother’s farm.
I opened my eyes again and looked at the oddly blue sky, clouds passed over my head in a number of shapes and sizes. dog… rabbit… heart… skull… how macabre.
“Jo,” I heard a voice call, it was so far away that it sounded as faint as a whisper. I sat up in the low grass and looked back toward the farm house. My grandmother was standing at the fence calling for me. “Jo,” she yelled – whispered – again.
I smiled up at her and waived, acknowledging that I had heard her, and ignoring the fact that she never called me Jo. I had started up the hill toward her when she started to fade. It was as though she was slowly becoming transparent. I ran toward her, but she faded completely as I reached her. Then other things began to fade… the house… the trees….
Where the cows had once been there were dozens of chairs, sofas and ottomans upholstered in the hides of the animals they replaced. Then, in a flash of blinding light, the valley was completely void of anything man-made, and aside from the black crows that flew past me in the dim light of dusk, I was the only living creature there. A brilliant flash of light surrounded me again and the entire valley was charred and burned.
One of the crows hopped from branch to branch on the burnt carcass of the tree next to me cackling like a storybook witch as I knelt and picked up a handful of the black sand that I stood in. It fell through my fingers and I watched as the grains found their way back to the ground, sending out ripples in the dune as though it were a pool of water.
The cackling crow leapt from her perch and flew at me, her black wings fluttering noisily toward my face. I threw up my arms to shield myself.
But I was still in the large canopied bed. I saw Demetrius and Father talking quietly near the hearth. I closed my eyes trying to forget them but I could hear every word they said as though they were sitting right next to me and talking in normal voices.
“She’s no longer in danger of being harmed. I do wish that she would come out of this soon.” Father’s voice rang in my head in the same manner as a tuning fork. The high-pitched reverberations made the place in the very center of my head twinge in pain.
“Those of us who do not choose this life are entitled to a period of mourning.” Demetrius’ voice was low enough that it did not cause the same painful spasm.
“But not this long!” I mentally winced at the sound of his voice.
“Unlike your children we left people we loved behind without a chance to say goodbye. Memories plague us in death.” Demetrius’ tone was filled with detest.
Death.
I sat in the stiff, straight-back pew listening to the quiet tones of the organ as it played through the drearier hymns. I looked to the faces on the table in front of me. It was wrong. My father and grandmother both stared back at me from behind glass in frames on the small table in front of the two caskets that rested behind the pulpit. They had died two years apart. Was my memory that confused?
I looked about the church and I was alone. No one else had come. Anger surged through me. Did no one care?
When I turned back toward the altar, the caskets were open and I heard a faint tapping noise, a quick succession of four taps followed by a pause and then four more. Turning to my right I saw a white, bone hand rapping out its impatience. The hand was connected to an exposed arm and I followed it upward to the empty-eyed leer of a bare skull.
“Jo,” the whispered yell called out from behind the unmoving jaws of the skull. I could do nothing but stare blankly at the skeleton that had risen and was walking toward me.
“Jo.” It called again
I stood to run, but there was nowhere to go, another skeleton had barred my exit. This specter was charred black and as I looked back now, they both were. The church had vanished and I was standing in the black sand again, two caskets in front of me and a charred skeleton standing to either side.
The cackling crow circled over my head again, landing on the left casket. She hopped along the wooden box and into the open top. Cackling resonated from the coffin.
I tried to move toward him, to shoo him away, but the skeletons barred me, holding each arm with bone fingers that dug painlessly into the flesh of my arms.
The crow jumped out of the casket with a gold pocket watch in his mouth. It was the watch I had given my father when I was ten. He had worn it every day until his death and it had been buried with him. I reached toward the crow, t
rying to grab the bauble from him.
Only one skeleton held me know, the other had released my arm, but my remaining skeleton captor clenched onto both of my arms, holding me from behind. The second skeleton walked toward the crow with its fleshless arm and hand extended toward the avian thief.
The crow obligingly dropped the watch in the skeleton’s hand and he quickly pinned it to his rib bone, turning back to me with his eyeless leer.
I found myself staring at the canopy again. It was as though my memories were mingling with hallucinations. Or were these dreams? My eyes did not close. How could one dream, if one did not sleep?
“I don’t know how much longer it will be.” Demetrius’ voice sounded distant, sad.
A faint voice, somewhere else, asked, “Have you tried rousting her.”
“She’s non-responsive.” Demetrius replied angrily. “It’s not as though she’ll just waltz out of this. She’s more or less comatose.”
“But can’t you try?” I recognized Father’s voice now; it was quiet, as though he wasn’t in the room.
“Your impatience will not end well.” Demetrius barked. “She will come out of it on her own, and when she does she will be better for it.” I heard the clacking half ring of an old telephone receiver.
I was in a bright pink ball gown now, my junior year prom dress. I looked about and saw my high school gym. Its floors covered in black paper, black plastic hanging from the ceiling in a circus tent like manner. The DJ at the far end of the room was dressed as a court jester and the songs that he was mixing were carnival-like and heavy in their accordion parts, almost Parisian. People in brightly colored leotards started climbing up and down the walls, a juggler lit his batons on fire as he peddled around the gym on his unicycle.
A man in a tuxedo and a carnival mask stepped from the black, “Jo,” he called in a whisper.
I stepped back to avoid being run over by the juggler, only to fall back into the arms of a clown. He was wearing a deer head with lit silver candelabras protruding from where his horns should be.
The man in the carnival mask seemed to be floating away from me; he was still calling me, “Jo.”
I struggled to get free of the deer-headed clown, but was helpless as we began to waltz and I realized that, though I desperately struggled to be free of him, my movements seemed like I was waltzing with him. He swirled me about in the dark of the gym and I closed my eyes, giving in. Giving up.
My feet sank into the floor and I opened my eyes again. We were waltzing in the charred valley, the skeletons were twirling next to us, as we spun around the caskets. The circus had followed us here and fire breathers had joined them.
Pillars of fire rose up from oddly stretched necks, lighting the blackness that surrounded me. Faces marked by insanity crowded in about me. Each one asking for the next dance. I was being spun about frantically.
The room stopped spinning and I wasn’t sure that it ever had been. I was still staring at the canopy. Its tufted purple velvet ceiling and cascading curtains seemed to be the lining of my casket. I wished it were so. I was depressed enough that I couldn’t enjoy the delusions that my depression seemed to be causing. It was pathetic.
If I could just go back to where I was before, if I could just have my life back. Life or death: I would take either. Anything other than this shamble of an existence. If I could go back to London, start my trip over again.
London
I was on the street in London again, standing about as though I was daft. Men and women bustled past me carrying their things and whistling Christmas tunes. Snow was falling about me and I felt the flakes on my bare arms. I was still in the black gown. It was just another hallucination-like memory.
The people that passed me, bundled in their winter coats with scarves and mittens, gave me odd looks, a few stopped mid-step to stare openly at me. I just ignored the delusional characters of my shattered psyche, and walked down the road, waiting for the black sand to swallow up this peaceful scene and send me back to that hellish charred valley.
“Silver bells, silver bells.” A large man in a blue winter coat with a knit stocking cap sang as he walked toward me, “It’s Christmas time… eh, excuse me miss. But you’re going to catch your death of cold.”
It was amusing that the people in my delusions would be concerned. Was it my subconscious attempting to tell me that I needed to find a shrink? I scoffed at the thought and just continued walking past him. There was no point in responding to my own hallucinations, no matter how polite they were.
“Don’t worry sir.” A familiar voice said from behind me. “She’s just experienced a very traumatic event, a death in the family, I’ll take her home.”
I felt a jacket go over my shoulders, but it didn’t make any difference, the snow was not cold to me. Why would snow that I hallucinated be cold?
Strong arms directed me from behind and I allowed them to lead me without question. They would only lead me to the desecrated valley. I did not dread it anymore. Prolonged exposure had made me numb to it.
The hands directed me down a side street and stopped me.
“Go home, Jo.” Demetrius’ voice whispered in my ear. Was I imagining him now too?
Home?
I was not home, but the canopy was above my head again and I settled back into the black valley within moments.
I was alone, no more cackling crows or circus performers or skeletons. Only the black sand and the burnt husks of trees surrounded me. I sat down and dug my hands into the black granules. I would endure eternity here, alone.
It wouldn’t kill me. I laughed uncontrollably at the thought, the malicious sound echoing across the black hills around me. Nothing would kill me. It was sick, in a way, that now death was all that I wished for.
I stood in the sand. I walked in the sand. I sat in the sand. My existence was consumed with the black sand of the emptiness of my being.
I stood staring into the dark horizon, when I felt a hand on my face.
“Jo,” a voice far above me called out. The voice was sad.
I looked to the purple velvet of the sky, but it wasn’t there. I was met with two eyes as dark as a moonless midnight, glittering silver as though laced with stars.
“Jo,” Demetrius said, but I didn’t respond. I stared at him without recognition. I suppose that anyone looking at me would assume that I was, in fact, dead. “Are you ever going to come back to us?”
The question was not for me. I didn’t know who he was speaking to, but it surely could not have been me. I returned to the black sands of my mental tomb. It was safe here. I sat in the black sand watching the nothingness of it all pass me by.
I felt a faint tugging at my skirt, but I ignored it, brushing down the fabric with my hand. I felt as though something crawled up my arm and I slid my hand along the length of it pushing away the feeling. My skirt was tugged again and I looked down.
The sand was crawling with millions of black spiders. I could barely differentiate between them and the sand itself. I stood up quickly trying to brush the creatures off of me.
I hate spiders.
I smacked myself brutally wherever I saw one, violently beating at my skirt, arms and chest. And then they were gone.
And I was alone in the dark desert.
The day that I began to care again, Demetrius came to sit beside me and I assumed he had done so quite often without my notice. The few times I had noticed him, he just sat and watched me, he was perfectly still, just staring down at me as though I were the only thing in the room worth his attention. This day, as he sat there staring down at me, I moved my head, and I stared back at him. The blackness of his eyes seemed comforting in an odd way that they had not before, and as I stared into them, time held meaning again. It was as though the sadness that was in them held some sort of purpose for me.
I blinked for the first time in what could have been years and breathed in again.
“Welcome back to the world of the undead.” Demetrius said in a sad joke
. “I didn’t think you were ever going to come out of that.”
“I didn’t think I would want to.” My voice came out oddly clearly; I had expected it to be rusty from its long period of disuse.
“It gets a little boring.” He said in a knowing way. “I only lasted two weeks.”
I laughed. Boring would never be an appropriate description of the delusions that I had experienced. Maybe I was alone in those. Maybe Demetrius’ self imposed solitude was very different from my own. The smile that came to my lips didn’t seem as foreign as I had expected.
“And how did I fare against your record?” Perhaps my depression was not as severe as I had expected.
“You’ve bested any record I have ever heard of. Father thought I had let you die for a time.” His face was still sad, though I knew he must be joking, I couldn’t die.
“How long?” I was curious now. I was upset that I had been the one to cause his sadness.
“You unsuccessfully tried to kill yourself six months and four days ago.”
“That’s very precise.” I said, feeling guiltier.
“The undead are the best time keepers in the world.” There was a faint smile at his lips now, as though it was a joke.
“Alright, I’ve come to accept the finality of my fate.” I took another breath; it seemed natural, even though I had just been told that I hadn’t breathed in over six months time. “What now?”
“I might start by getting out of bed.” Demetrius ran his hand over my hair as though I was a small child. “And perhaps you could begin by changing your clothes.”
I looked down at the same dress I had been wearing; surprised it hadn’t been eaten off of me by moths. I sat up and felt something slide off of my shoulders.
A black dinner jacket lay slightly crumpled where I had been lying. I looked at it quizzically and then turned back to Demetrius.
“I thought you’d come out of it when I had to chase you into London.” He shuddered slightly. “That was very scary for me.”
“That actually happened?” I looked between him and the coat incredulously.
