CW: parental rejection/abandonment, normalized genocidal ideology, police, biomedical surveillance, coerced medication, housing discrimination, bullying, antipsychotics, marijuana, dubiously consensual full-time power dynamic, possible grooming, child soldiers
In the end, I decide there isn’t much I'll be taking along to the group home. I plan on moving back here anyway, so I pack only what I need most. Fresh clothes, my own bedsheets, my toothbrush, my pillow, the books I borrowed from Ruby and Robin. A pang of guilt shoots through my heart. I still haven’t messaged them, and neither have I put time into reading the books. I shake away the guilt, and continue packing. It isn’t important right now. For a moment I contemplate leaving my Maria Mithras poster here, in my room, to hold the fort. But my mother might trash it while I’m gone, and it’s irreplaceable to me. I carefully fold it, and take it along with me.
When I have everything, it’s already dark out. I text my dad “I’m leaving for a group home for now. Good luck fixing things with mom and see you soon : )” and then leave.
On the bus I realize that I would’ve been incredibly anxious about this before the medication. The soft numbing makes the moving more of a chore than a stressful activity with uncertain prospects. It’s only slightly further away than my school is, which is nice. I’ll be able to walk to school instead of biking or taking the bus, which’ll save me a lot of time. The group home is part of an apartment complex in Amsterdam South, and when I arrive there I realize it’s rather ramshackle. I don’t mind, though, and go up to the apartment complex entrance. I ring, and after a while the door buzzes and automatically opens. The apartment where my room is is quite high up, the sixth floor, and the elevator is malfunctioning so I’m out of breath when I arrive there. A girl is waiting for me at the door. She’s deadly pale, and despite it already being after sunset, she’s wearing sunglasses. The vampire I’ll be sharing the apartment with.
“Hey,” still panting from climbing the stairs.
“Hello,” she says quietly. “Welcome. We’ve already cleaned your room for you. Please come in.” She’s almost whispering, but despite that her voice is audibly hoarse.
“I’m Marieken,” I introduce myself.
“I’m Kate,” the girl whispers. Despite her minimal mouth movements while speaking, I catch glimpses of the fangs behind her lips.
It still feels weird, sharing a home with a vampire after spending half my adolescence reading Anne Rice. Kate theatrically invites me in. I wonder if that’s a vampire joke or something she’s used to doing for her own kind, but am hesitant to pry. I don’t want to be insensitive or awkward in our first conversation. After I take off my shoes and drop my bag, she shows me around. The apartment is quite spacious, but a far cry from my parental home. There’s a living room that doubles as a small kitchen, a tiny bathroom doubling as a shower and three bedrooms. One’s been cleared out for me, and only has a mattress and a closet in it. I’m glad I brought my own pillow, blankets and sheets. I spend some time in a haze unpacking all of my stuff. When I’m done, I sit down on the mattress and stare into space for a bit. Moving turns out to be more exhausting than I had thought. After a while Kate knocks on my door, and I invite her in.
“Do you want some tea?” She whispers. “I’ve made some.”
“Sure,” I say, instinctively lowering my voice to match hers. I cringe a little, wondering if I already did something wrong, made a faux pas that’ll make her hate me. I join her in the living room, at the dense but pitted and worn wooden table she has there. She places a cup of tea in front of me and gestures at a bowl of sugarcubes.
“I hope moving wasn’t too stressful for you,” Kate whispers.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s more exhausting than I thought, but I’m fine.”
“We have another roommate, but I never quite know when he gets home,” Kate says. “He’s nice though, so you don’t have to stress about that.”
“I’m not, don’t worry,” I say.
“You are,” Kate says, and I feel incredibly weird. “You don’t have to worry. We’re both nice. I am very quiet and Walter, your other roommate, struggles with social skills sometimes so he won’t hold you to any absurd standards either.”
I wonder if she’s making an educated guess or somehow knows I am somewhat anxious meeting the people I have to share the next few weeks with.
“It’s because I’m a telepath,” she says and I get so startled I almost fall off my chair.
“First time someone has responded directly to a thought you had?” Kate whispers. “I’m sorry, it sucks, it takes forever to get used to either. And before you ask, no, I can’t not do that. I can’t exactly turn it off.”
“Oh,” I say. “That’s okay.”
Is it though, I wonder? I don’t really want her digging around in my brain.
“I can’t do that,” she says, and I feel caught, guilty. “I can only read surface thoughts, things you’re thinking out loud in your head.”
“Ah,” I say.
“I can teach you,” she whispers. “To think without thinking. To hide your thoughts. So that you won’t come to hate me in due time.”
“Hate you?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “Most people come to hate me.”
I feel sad, but the pain is dulled by the fluffy clouds in my brain. I’m glad, really. I used to break down crying when total strangers were in pain.
“How odd,” Kate says with her hoarse, hushed voice. “What odd thoughts you have.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Yeah,” Kate replies. “I know.”
I nod, smiling. I might get along with Kate really well, I realize.
“I’m not staying up long,” she says. “I’ll go to sleep in a bit. I have medication to help me sleep at night instead of during the day, and I have to take it on time. Please do not wake me unless absolutely necessary.”
“Alright,” I say. “I’ll go sleep too, I have school tomorrow and then places to be.”
Kate nods, understanding.
I take my pills, brush my teeth and lie down on the old mattress that’s to be my bed for now. The next morning, I find Kate has made breakfast for me, and is waiting for me at the table.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say.
Kate shakes ‘no’. “I do,” she says. “I never leave the house. I will depend on you for a lot. I must do things in return. Clean, cook food for you. It’s good for bonding too. So that you won’t hate me.”
“Kate,” I say. “I’ve only just met you. You don’t have to be so nice.”
“It’s not nice,” she says. “It’s transactional. I might have to depend on you at some point and I don’t want it to feel like a burden, then.”
I shake my head, but can’t come up with a good reply. My head’s full of mist. After breakfast I take my next dose of meds, and head to school. I don’t run into Sareth or her two friends, and am completely zoned out while Amy and Jan talk to me during lunch breaks.
The day, like many, goes by like a dream in a feverish haze.
~
At school it’s like I’m a ghost. Jan and Amy’s conversation subjects can’t hold my attention because I’m zoning out all the time, but it’s not like I was incredibly close with them before. I guess I never really noticed how much of an outsider I was until now. Sareth and her friends seem to be absent today, to my relief. I’m terrified of running into them in the hallways again. Or worse, when I’m all by myself on the schoolyard. As the last class of the day ends, I pack up my books and walk around in the school hallways for a bit. I don’t really know why, but it doesn’t bother me either. After a while I wander close to the exit, and decide to head out. I almost head towards my parental home before remembering I’m supposed to go to the group home before remembering I’m supposed to go to the Academy for Gifted Paraphysicals.
I’m halfway to my dad's place before I remember that again, and change my direction. While on my way, I intently stare at the floor. It’s sunny out today, even though summer is almost over and fall comes very quickly in this country. Despite that, I cast only one shadow. The sun has nothing to do with that, I realize. The medication is suppressing my second shadow. For a minute I feel a deep sense of longing. Being magic and special had tremendously excited me the first few days, even as my life crumbled to bits around me. Bits of those feelings flare up, and I consider attempting to shadow-step, to teleport again. Conjuring up the mental images that made it happen the first time turns out almost impossible with the fog in my head, and it tires me out so much I quickly give up. Perhaps they’ll be able to help me at the Paraphysicals center or whatever it was called.
When I reach the place, I immediately lose that hope. It’s an absolutely ramshackle building next to a local police station, seemingly an abandoned then repurposed school. One of the white-and-blue letters spelling ‘Academy for Gifted Paraphysicals’ has fallen off, turning ‘Gifted’ into ‘ifted’. There aren’t a lot of people there, either. There’s someone behind the desk at the entrance, but I can’t spot anyone else, at least not from the entrance hall. The man behind the desk is frighteningly tall, but his almost spindly build and emaciated face somehow make him look small at the same time. He wears a long, black leather duster and has a depressingly large amount of shaving cuts on his face. Though he’s indoors, he’s smoking a cigarette.
“Hello,” I say. “I’m here for Paraphysical work.”
“Hm,” he says. “That sucks.”
“Oh. Are you closed?”
“Huh?” He asks, confused. “Why would we be closed?”
“Because you- what?”
I am at least equally confused as he just seemed to be, and now worry I misheard him or am misunderstanding something.
“Sorry, I was making a joke,” the man explains when he sees the worried look on my face. “Are you new? I haven’t seen you before.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I have documents with me.” “Great, documents.”
An awkward silence falls between us, and after a while I anxiously start ruffling through my bag looking for the documents I’m supposed to hand in.
“Thanks,” the man says as I hand him the documents, but then he pushes them back in my hands. “Down the hall to the left and up the stairs to the second floor. You’re looking for Juliet Rosencrantz. And no, I don’t know how she managed to get that job either.”
“Huh? What does that mean?”
“Don’t worry about it. I have a paranoid disorder, I’m convinced I live in a tv show,” he nonchalantly explains. “It’s part of my ability.”
“Your ability? Are you a witch?”
“No, I’m a unique case. Sometimes people with psychological disorders and a high paraphysical aptitude score develop unique abilities. It’s not magic by the scientific definition but it’s also not, like, normal, either so who cares.”
Even through the fluffy haze that envelops my mind, the man piques my interest.
“What’s your ability?” I ask.
“I don’t have a cool name for it. I think that by putting labels on things, you diminish their capacity to be anything else but what that label describes. But concisely put, as long as I keep acting like a character from a television show, I can force reality to play out along the rules of a film noir story.”
“That’s-”
I want to say ‘really weird’, but he interrupts me.
“Really cool, I know. Anyway, you gotta meet the lady on the second floor. She can explain how this whole thing works. You’ll probably be sent on a few expeditions with different partners so they can get an assessment of how strong you are, what you’re good at, and then you can take missions through the app.”
My heart sinks all the way down to my feet. This isn’t exactly what I thought this place would be.
“Hey,” the man says. “Don’t pout. It’s good work. It’s superhero stuff. Saving people from demons and nightmare corruption and dangerous cults. If you develop a taste for it you can live a good life like this. It’s better than wasting away in a homeless shelter because nobody wants to employ vampires.”
He confuses me for a second, and then I realize he’s got me confused for a vampire. “No, I’m a Moontouched,” I quickly say. “I’m not a vampire.”
“Oh. The kind with superpowers or the kind that gets mopey when other people are sad?” I look at him, confused. “Crystal Court or a real court?” He asks, loud and seemingly annoyed.
“Shadow Court,” I answer, somewhat scared that’ll turn out to be an unacceptable answer.
“In that case you’ll be fine. I was scared the Municipal Government had sent another fragile girl with ‘a working sense of empathy’ as her only superpower our way again.”
I nod, pretending I understand.
“Second floor,” he says again. “Off you go.”
Confused by the man’s extremely odd behaviour and worried I’m about to meet someone just as weird or worse, I make my way down the hall and then up the stairs. The second floor is a long hallway with offices, only some of which seem to be in use. I walk along a few until I spot one with a sign that says ‘J. Rosencrantz.’ I linger in front of the door for a bit, wondering if I should knock, or just head in right away. Eventually I settle on knocking, but the moment I touch the door I realize it’s not entirely closed and accidentally push it open instead.
“Welcome,” a young lady yells from behind a laptop. I think it’s a MacBook at first, but then I realize it’s got a pear instead of an apple as logo. “Come in, take a seat.” She gestures at the office chair in front of her desk.
I hurry inside, close the door behind me and sit down. “What can I do for you?” She asks.
“I was told to report here, I have documents. I mean, I scored high on my affinity test, and I can get a job here?” I somehow manage to garble my statement into a question.
“Ah,” Ms. Rosencrantz says. “Delightful. You must be Marieken. I read your test report, both of them. Very good, scoring a respectable twenty-five while on both antipsychotics and suppressors. Tell me, are you experiencing any side effects?”
“Well,” I say. “They numb my feelings a lot, but I don’t really mind. I think I would be under a lot of stress otherwise, and I’m actually glad I don’t have to feel so much right now.”
“Wonderful,” she says. “Let’s see those files you brought me.”
I hand her my folder full of documents, and she starts flipping through them with astonishing speed. There’s something odd about her eyes, I realize as I watch her read at superhuman speed. She’s wearing coloured contacts.
“Are you Moontouched?” I ask.
“No, Periphery Demographics aren’t allowed to hold government positions. That would cause a conflict of interests.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the end goal of global policy right now is a return to baseline reality, with no Periphery Demographics left. Don’t you think some of them might object to that?”
I have thought about that, but only for a bit at a time. Thinking about it makes me sick.
“Anyway,” she says, putting my files away in a drawer under her desk. “Good test results, good performance in school. Nice physical education grades, too. If you want to, I can send you out on a mission tonight, to evaluate your abilities.”
“I-” I want to complain, but I lose my sentence stammering.
“What is it? You can tell me, you don’t have to be anxious. Nobody is mad at you.” Her voice is oddly soothing, and a warm feeling washes over me. She’s right.
“I thought this was more like a school, like in the comic books,” I explain.
“Yeah,” she says. “That used to be the case. But the government decided that was counterproductive. So now we’ve been reduced to an underfunded dependance of the police. It’s a tragedy. But don’t worry. I’ll set you up with more experienced heroes who can teach you the ropes, teach you the tricks of the trade.”
“Okay,” I say, not entirely reassured.
“You’re classmates with Hiro de Vries, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s decided,” she says. “Tonight you can accompany Hiro to eradicate some nightmare erosion on the edge of town. You get along with him, right?”
I don’t really, but I think I’ll manage, so I answer ‘yes.’ “Good. Any questions?”
“Yeah. What is nightmare erosion?”
~
I’ve heard of nightmare erosion before, of course. In passing. Read about it in school textbooks, been through the hazing ritual of your classmates daring you to watch recovered footage on shady youtube-knockoff websites. But I don’t have a real conception of what nightmare erosion is, except as a kind of nebulous disaster that can befall abandoned locations, or places where crimes have happened. Places people would have considered ‘haunted’ long before such things suddenly became much more real and much more destructive.
Ms. Rosencrantz hands me a textbook. ‘Field Manual to Operating in Nightmare Infested Territory’, it reads. Half the pages are torn out, and an astounding amount of text has been removed with white eraser.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “The most important bits are still there. Back in the day, the governments tried to harness all kinds of stuff for themselves, you see. But that didn’t go so well.”
“I see.”
She gets up from her chair after giving me the book, and stands behind me. I look over my shoulder at her, questioning.
“I want to watch you read. I’ll answer questions, I’ll point things out for you.”
“Okay,” I say. It feels a little odd having her look over my shoulder. Like she’s judging me.
“Start at chapter three, it’s mostly intact and contains lots of important information,” she says while bending over, almost whispering it directly into my ear. It makes me feel strange, and more than a little threatened.
Shaking a little from discomfort, I flip through the ruined book until I find chapter three. ‘Nightmare Erosion and UAs,’ it’s called.
“Uwas?” I ask.
“Unknown Adversaries. That was before we dropped the pretentious act and just started calling them demons like normal people.”
“I see,” I say.
As my eyes lock onto the first sentence, Ms. Rosencrantz grabs me by my wrists. Before I can protest, she whispers something in my ear. I can’t parse what she says, because I cannot tear my attention away from the book anymore.
The contents of the page make itself known to me in a split second, and Juliet puppets my hands to flip the page. And again, and again, and again.
A tremendous amount of information pours into my head, and as it does, she whispers things into my ears. No, I realize. She whispers them directly into my mind. Information on nightmare erosion. Information on demons. Some form of reverse telepathy, maybe? But she said she had no powers, as government officials aren’t allowed to be Periphery Demographics. As I sit there, contemplating, I realize I’ve finished reading the book. I snap out of my trance, and find Ms. Rosencrantz still holding my wrists, gently rubbing her thumb over my radial artery, and pull my arms free with a frightened yelp.
“What did you just do?” I yell at her.
“Helped you see some things that were previously hidden,” she says, putting on the most impressive fake-innocent smile I’ve seen in my life. Impressive for how purposefully fake it is, as if it’s to intimidate rather than reassure.
It is, I realize.
“But I don’t remember anything from reading the book just now,” I complain.
“You will, it’s lodged in your subconscious.”
She takes the book away from me, and puts it in a drawer behind her desk before sitting down on her chair again.
“I thought you said you had no powers?”
“I don’t,” she says. “That wasn’t magic. That was hypnosis- a well-documented scientific phenomenon that existed long before the destabilization of reality. By bringing the brain in a state of trance, a state of vulnerability, information can be added by the hypnotist at leisure.”
“Really?” I ask. She took seconds to pour the contents of an entire book and then some into my subconsciousness. I doubt that was hypnosis. “It only took you seconds to do that, that doesn’t seem natural to me.”
“Seconds?” She asks, making a frowning, pouting face while putting one of her fingers to her lips. It’s the kind of over-emoting I sometimes see girls in my school do, but from this older lady it comes across as creepy, not endearing.
“Oh!” she then says. “Yeah, it felt like seconds to you, because you were in trance. We spent well over an hour on that book, the two of us.” She laughs a little, then glances at the clock.
I do the same, and realize she’s lying. Barely two minutes have passed.
“I’m gonna have to ask you some questions,” she says before I can accuse her of lying.
“A test?” I ask.
“No, silly,” she laughs. “Not a test. Don’t worry. If you need the information that’s now in your subconscious, you’ll have access to it. It’s a flawless Technique.”
I’m almost certain she stresses the word ‘technique’ on purpose. “What do you need to ask then?”
“I need to write down some documentation on your powers and abilities. You’re Moontouched, your file says. Shadow Court. What all can you do?”
“Euh,” I say. “I can teleport.”
“Really now,” Ms. Rosencrantz says. “Please demonstrate that.”
“What?”
“Show me. Teleport.”
I still haven’t done it since that day. Desperate not to disappoint her, I try to conjure up the images required in my head.
Instead of endlessly captivating, I find them tiring. I feel a little stupid for creating childish images like that in my head and expecting them to have a tangible impact on reality, and give up.
“Well?” Juliet asks. “Or did you teleport so fast I missed it?”
“No, I-”
“Am on antipsychotics, I know,” she finishes my sentence with words I didn’t want to use at all. “There’s no way you can pull off a shadow-step on antipsychotics and suppressors. Do you have any other abilities, ones that would be useful in removing nightmare erosion from an apartment building?”
Nightmare Erosion always has a core, I suddenly hear Ms. Rosencrantz her voice in my mind. A conduit from which it’s leaking into our world from the world of dreams. The conduit is usually a living thing. Killing it will sever the connection, stopping the erosion, after which the area will slowly return to normal.
I jump up, startled.
“Hm?” Juliet asks.
“Sorry,” I say, sitting back down. “No, I don’t think I have those.”
“That’s unfortunate. Hm, without going through all the proper paperwork and training I can’t exactly hand you a firearm either. Hiro is going to look out for you, of course, but I’d feel bad if I didn’t give you anything to defend yourself with.”
With every passing moment it becomes more and more clear to me that I’m not cut out for this. That I might not actually want to do this. Even if I could access all my powers, I wouldn’t want to use them to fight nightmare monsters. When they say ‘superhero stuff’ I usually get a mental image of saving kittens from trees or maybe stopping armed robberies. As I’m working up the courage to tell Juliet this, she’s busy rummaging through a dingy, banged up locker behind her desk. She turns around, keeping an aluminum baseball bat in her hands, and points it at me.
“The perfect weapon for our young heroine.”
“Ms. Rosencrantz,” I stammer. “I don’t think this is right for me.”
Instead of getting mad at me, she smiles. She lowers the bat, walks over to me, and squats down next to me. “Marieken,” she says. “Nobody is cut out for this. It’s terrifying, it’s a job where you confront literal nightmares leaking into the real world. But you’re special, you’ve got magic, you’ve got talent. Nightmare erosion kills people, Marieken. Normal people, with no defenses against it whatsoever. Tag along with Hiro tonight. If you really think it’s too bad, you don’t have to do it. I’ll sign whatever papers you need me to sign to get the government off your back. But you have to at least try.”
Her voice is soothing, and takes away my worries. If it was as bad as I think it is, they wouldn’t let literal children do this.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll try, okay?”
“Good girl,” Juliet says, smiling, as she hands me the baseball bat.
~ With the baseball bat cradled in my arms I find myself taking the subway alongside Hiro. It’s late at night by now and the few other passengers avoid us like the plague. Around me, the tram rumbles and the lights sweep by. Hiro doesn’t talk much, and I get the feeling he’s not happy having to babysit me on this mission. He keeps fidgeting with his katana, and I don’t know if that’s irritation, anxiety or anticipation. We ride the subway down Amsterdam South, to Crow’s Nest, an impoverished and neglected suburb. Before the government had their hands full with the ever-increasing amount of Periphery Demographics, they had their hands full of plain old racism, which led to the construction of neighborhoods that were- although not officially- to segregate minority populations away from the main body of the city. They then neglected to spend any money on maintenance, and let them wither away. When the second wave of destabilization happened in the nineties, those neighborhoods suffered the brunt of the effects, which the government- although not officially- was completely fine with. Resentment is a powerful force though, and it didn’t take long before that resentment was ripping holes in space-time and spewing demons out into the city. Ever since, the lowest classes of society have had the privilege of being protected from their demons by people like Hiro- if only so that these demons don’t escape to wreak havoc in more affluent neighborhoods.
The station at Crow’s Nest is decrepit and stinks of piss. I shiver a little in the cold night air, and instinctively look up to see if I can see the moon. The sky is overcast, and I cannot, which makes me feel a little colder still.
“Come,” Hiro says as he readjusts his trenchcoat. I hurry after him through the almost completely abandoned subway station.
We take the stairs down from the platform and find ourselves on the city streets.
“It’s not far,” he says. “There’s an abandoned mall near here. Some unsavory things went down there, which has caused nightmare corruption.”
Nightmare corruption. The literal nightmares of the tormented who have since gone to hell eating away at the fabric of the world, Juliet’s voice whispers in my ear.
“I know,” I say. “You say that everytime I think of ‘Nightmare Corruption’, I know, okay?” “What are you on about?” Hiro asks, looking over his shoulder as if to see if I’m still there. “Sorry.”
He shrugs, and we continue our path through the city, over worn cobblestone and underneath the orange glow of old lanterns. Before long, we reach the abandoned mall. Most windows are broken and there's glass scattered everywhere. Where once there must’ve been those revolving, glass doors, is now a gaping hole. Nothing remains but a concrete shell. Inside is dark, and all that’s visible through the entrance is a dark abyss. Hiro draws his katana, sits down on his knees with it in his hands, and starts praying. I dare not interrupt him. When he’s done, he gets back up and gestures to me to follow him.
“Be on your guard,” he whispers as we cross into the building. “There’s probably only a single demon, but it might’ve set up lesser nightmares as guards. Things it has stolen from the minds of people sleeping nearby, or if we’re unlucky, from the minds of the dying.”
“That would be worse?” I ask, trembling, shaking. Even the powerful medication I’m on can’t fully suppress my fear.
“Yes,” Hiro says. “The dying have worse dreams than the living, for sure.”
A faint “oh” is all I can muster in reply.
As we walk further into the darkness, my eyesight adjusts and to my surprise I can see pretty well. “It’s not as dark as I thought it’d be,” I say. “That was probably an illusion created by the brighter light outside.”
“Not as dark? I can’t see a thing, I’m sharpening my other senses to be able to navigate,” Hiro says as if it’s the most ordinary thing in the world.
Maybe it’s because I’m Moontouched, I think. Or perhaps Shadow Court in particular. That’d make sense.
“There’s a lot of ground to cover, but I’ve got a trick for that. Watch this,” Hiro says as he sheathes his sword, and starts to go through a long sequence of hand gestures. “Clone Jutsu, go!” He yells when he’s done, and I have to do my best to stifle a laugh.
From his body, five new, translucent Hiro erupt. The ghostly Hiro rush away from us at incredible speed, and the original draws his sword again. “They’ll scout the area for us. They can relay information to me mentally, so it’s like I’ve got six pairs of eyes now.”
“Woah,” I say, genuinely astonished. “That’s amazing. How’d you do that?”
“Hm,” Hiro says. “Normally, a simple trick like this would be easy, just a matter of envisioning the right images in my head. But the medication I’m on fucks with my powers, so I have to resort to rituals I have created to trick my brain into creating the images anyway. In this case, the ritual is hand gestures from a cartoon I used to watch as a kid, which incidentally, is also where I got this power from.”
“I see!” I say. “Perhaps I can shadow-step again if I come up with an appropriate ritual then. I tried again today in Ms. Rosencrantz’ office, and it failed.”
“Shadow-step?” Hiro asks, a strange tone in his voice. “That's advanced shadow magic. Everyone needs rituals for that, no matter how talented.”
“No,” I say, “I did it several times in a row before I was put on suppressors and antipsychotics.”
“Bullshit,” Hiro spits. “If that’s true, then even medicated you should be able to pull the simpler Shadow Court tricks without much effort.”
“What are those?” I ask.
“Wouldn’t know,” he says. “I’m not a- Fuck!”
“What’s wrong?”
Hiro grunts. “I found the demon. Bad news: it has human victims.” “Where?” I ask. “We should-”
Nightmare demons sometimes brainwash and puppet human ‘victims’, Juliet’s sweet voice whispers in my ear. You can’t save them, only put them out of their misery before their soul has been completely replaced with nightmares.
I gulp.
“It’s coming,” Hiro whispers, and he stretches out his sword arm to prevent me from passing him by. In front of us is the back end of the central hall of the mall, where the shredded metal and broken plastic is all that remains of the elevators leading to the second floor. Above them, a tall, imposing figure looms.
As I fully process what I’m seeing, I take a step back. And another, and another, and as I prepare to turn around and run outside as fast my legs can carry me, it speaks.
“Shadow girl,” it’s voice booms, and I am rooted in place.
The creature- the demon- is a tall, vaguely humanoid shape of pure darkness. Two red-hot coals float in the darkness, creating the suggestion of eyes. Above its ‘head’ floats a crown made from barbed wire, shards of glass and other trash. In one of its extremities- I cannot call them hands or arms- it holds a chain, and that chain splits in five. To each end it keeps a human being, warped and changed and more akin to rabid dogs. I want to run, I want to run so badly but my legs do not move. The demon laughs, a stomach-curdling laugh and now I do not just want to run, I want to throw up. My heart rate is so high it interferes with my breathing, and I cannot manage to scream.
“Little human,” it calls out to Hiro. “Give me the shadow girl. I long to take her down into the nightmare. I loathe her kind.”
Tears well up in my eyes as my head is involuntarily filled with visions. I’m not sure if they’re my imagination or from the encyclopedia that’s now seemingly in my head, but they make me revulse nonetheless.
Before me, Hiro laughs. “What kind of nightmare are you supposed to be? A slaver? That makes little sense in an abandoned mall. Oh, I know. You’re a nightmare about sex traffickers, aren’t you? Are those five what caused you to form? Did they keep some woman here until her fears consumed her, and she turned into you?”
“Clever,” the demon says, and he lets go of the chain.
I finally manage to scream. It’s a gut-wrenching scream of blind panic as the five mutated monsters, still vaguely resembling human beings, rush forward.
Everything seems to move in slow motion. Only one of the nightmare’s pets seems to go directly for Hiro, the others rushing past him towards me. As I force my body to turn around and attempt to run, I hear a swishing sound, and a series of terrible cuts and squelches. I instinctively turn my head, and see too many limbs no longer attached to bodies. From four mangled corpses spray fountains of black blood. The fifth mutant, however, rushes straight for me. I can’t fight that, I realize. I can’t fight at all. This is insane. Why am I doing this to begin with? Money? Because someone told me?
Because I have to, I realize. They threatened me if I didn’t.
I pray that I survive, and I pray that Ms. Rosencrantz will be willing to write a letter that I have absolutely zero talent for this, as I grip my baseball bat as tightly as I can, and raise it above my head. In the distance, I hear steel clash on steel, and chains rattle and whip. Hiro is fighting the demon, I realize. He’s been doing this for a long time. He’s not even scared anymore. I also understand his ‘child soldier’ sentiment now. This isn’t something you force children to do, not even in the name of public safety. This is madness. The mutant is almost upon me now, and I bring down the baseball bat as hard as I can. With a sickening thud and a crunch, it impacts on its skull. For a second I think I’m screwed, as it doesn’t stop moving and slams straight into me. I get pushed on the ground, and scream and scream and scream, struggling to get out from under the mutated man, instinctively closing my eyes in the process.
Then I realize he has stopped moving, and I feel a thick fluid dripping onto my face. I open my eyes, and realize it’s what remains of the man’s brains, leaking out from a crack I bashed into his skull.
I scream again, and pass out.
~
It is past midnight when I stumble up the stairs of the apartment complex I’m staying at. There are horrible dark stains on my clothes- a mixture of literal nightmare fluids and blood. My throat hurts from the amount I’ve thrown up, and I’ve got a persistent sting in my chest. I hope it’s not my heart giving out. I keep thinking about hugging my mom and crying about all the horrible things they made me go through today, but those thoughts just make the pain worse. Exhausted, sick and still shaking from sudden bursts of adrenaline I ring the doorbell and wait for Kate to open up. She throws the door open quite violently, which startles me and makes me back into the railing behind me.
“What happened to you?” Kate says in her hoarse voice, the first time I’ve heard her speak louder than a whisper.
“I’m sorry,” I say, remembering Kate can read minds. Maybe I should leave before I hurt her with my presence.
“No,” Kate says, and I feel caught. Did I think that on purpose? I’m not sure. “Come in,” she says.
Somewhat hesitant, I follow Kate inside. She goes straight to the living room, and flips on the electric kettle.
“I’ll make tea. Have you had anything to eat?” “No.”
“I’ll make you noodles as well. Go shower, put all your clothes in the laundry basket, I’ll clean them tomorrow.”
“You don’t-” I start a sentence, but Kate interrupts me.
“If you’re going to be like that, then go to your room and mope.”
She startles me, again. I wonder what I said wrong. As if to answer that question she walks up to me, uncomfortably close to me, until I can back away from her no further and bump into the wall. Close enough that I can see the vague contours of her eyes through her sunglasses.
“If I tell you I will do a thing for you, I will do that thing for you,” she whispers. “If I tell you I’m fine doing something for you, I’m fine doing something for you. You’ve only met me yesterday so you’re probably used to pretend-niceties and having to politely tell people you don’t really want their help even though you do.”
I gulp.
“Get this through your shadowy skull: If I am helping you, that is because I want to. I am helping you because we’re stuck in the same shithole together, and we cannot depend on anyone else. Someday I might need your help, and then I will expect you to give it to me freely. Do you understand me?”
She sounds angry, but her words are kind. I get incredibly confused, and nod ‘yes’ to get her to back off. Instead of backing off, she grabs me by the chin.
“Do. You. Understand. Me?” She whispers, carefully stressing each word. “I’m sorry,” I yelp. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand, I'm sorry.”
She lets me go, and heads to the kitchen with a deep sigh. “Go shower,” she says. “I’ll make noodles and tea for you and tomorrow I will wash your clothes.”
Scared of antagonizing her any further, I nod and rush to my room. I haven’t unpacked most of my stuff, so I just dig my towel and some fresh clothes out of my bag, and head to the shower. It’s a small, cramped space, not like the luxurious bath in my parent’s home, but I don’t mind. I don’t need a very large shower to crumple up into a ball underneath and cry, after all. I cry a lot. Nothing is going the way it’s supposed to be going. I shouldn’t have to deal with all this. Discovering I was Moontouched was scary enough before they wanted me to fight against monsters. I curse and cry and wish I was a normal human girl with normal human parents who love her. This is punishment, I realize. Punishment for every time I saw a Moontouched boy or girl on the streets and secretly wondered how cool it would be to discover you have magical powers and cool hair and eyes. I asked for this. I look around for my second shadow, almost instinctively. But of course it’s nowhere to be seen. The shadow-girl that was stuck to me for a few days is gone- taken away from me. I’m not allowed to have the fun parts of being Moontouched. Just the rot.
Suddenly someone bangs on the bathroom door. “You okay in there?”
Kate’s muffled voice is barely audible through the door and falling water. I wonder if life is the same for Kate. It probably is. She’s on pills, right? To sleep at night and be awake during the day. Not allowed to do cool vampire things, just to rot in an apartment. Worried that Kate needs me or something I turn off the shower and start drying myself off. There’s some black stains on the towel after I dry my hair, and for a second I hope my hair is back to white now. The mirror dashes that hope though. Still black. I struggle to put on my spare clothes in the cramped shower, but eventually succeed.
“Kate?” I ask, as I leave the shower.
I find her hunched over on the table, sobbing. Next to her are two bowls of noodles, two cups of tea and some chopsticks and forks.
“Kate? Can I help you with anything?”
“It’s always like this,” she sobs. “Always the same. I’m sorry. My mind will clear up in a bit. I have to experience your thoughts too, you know. No- no, stop that. Don’t feel guilty about it. This is my burden to bear, and it’s not your fault. Come, sit down.”
A little hesitant- still a little afraid of her bizarre swings in behaviour- I do as she says and sit down across from her.
“Here,” she whispers as she shoves one bowl of cheap instant noodles in my direction. “If you do groceries for me tomorrow, I’ll cook whatever you like. To make up for the bad noodles.”
I half-form a complaint born from a desire to say ‘you don’t have to’ but swallow it. I don’t want her to get mad at me again.
“Do you want chopsticks or a fork to eat with?”
“Fork,” I say, feeling a little silly that I don’t know how to eat with chopsticks.
Kate hands me the fork, and deftly uses her own chopsticks to scoop some noodles from her bowl.
“I’m sorry you’re going through all this,” she says after eating in silence for a bit. “That nightmare stuff, that’s horrible. I hope you can manage to get from under that nonsense. They used to have whole police squads trained to deal with stuff like that, you know.”
“I didn’t-” I start, but I’m interrupted.
In the seventies, after the first wave of destabilization, an international arms race was underway to militarize paraphysics phenomena. To protect the populace from demonic incursions and rogue para-psychics, several countries formed special armed forces teams to combat the supernatural threat while scientists worked on a more permanent solution in the background.
Kate looks at me. Even with her sunglasses, her face betrays surprise. “Who is that?” She asks. “There’s someone else in your head!”
“That’s euh. I don’t know? That’s an encyclopedia that a government worker hypnotized into my brain. To give me advice on dealing with nightmare erosion stuff.”
“That’s insane,” Kate says. “Are they allowed to do that? Just put stuff in your brain?”
“I think so? They also put me on heavy medication.”
“Horrible,” Kate says. “We don’t have it easy, have we.”
“I’ve only been Moontouched for a week or two. I still kind of hope I can fix my life.”
“Marieken,” Kate whispers solemnly. “That’s not going to happen. You’re not human. The absolute best you can expect out of your life is managing to survive this hell until they fix the destabilization issue and then all of us die regardless. Don’t cling to hopeless dreams.”
I want to object. I want to tell her that she’s wrong and that my parents love me and that everything will turn out fine, that the designation on our ID cards doesn’t make us any less human than the rest.
I fail to. It’s only been two weeks, and I’m losing faith.
~
My sleep is a black emptiness, a space of time devoid of anything happening. I haven’t dreamt since I started the medication.
Dreaming is the number one vector for Nightmare Contamination, I hear Juliet’s voice in my head as I’m waking up. Dream-killing fluoride compounds have proven highly effective at stopping the spread of demonic incursions when added to tap water. Continued research into these compounds formed the basis of modern Suppressor medication.
That’s odd. I wonder if they still add those to tap water. That doesn’t seem entirely safe to me. Outside my room, I hear voices. The hushed voice of Kate, almost inaudible from here, and a cheerful, energetic voice I haven’t heard before. I put on my clothes, and go to the living room.
“Hey hey,” a cheerful boy says. Boy? Man? I can’t tell his age. He’s got a little stubble on his face, but it hardly makes him look older. “I’m Walter, I was out of town last week so I completely missed you moving in. You’re Marieken, right? Are you getting along with Kate?”
I nod. “Yeah. Kate’s nice.”
He laughs. It’s energetic, full of life. I feel jealous.
“We’ve almost completely run out of groceries and Kate can’t stand going outside so I’m going to do some grocery shopping. Want to come along?”
Before I can answer, Kate says “No. She has to stay here.”
“Ah,” Walter says. “Well, I’ll leave you be then. I’ll be back in an hour or so. Anything you want for breakfast Marieken? Orange juice? Toast?”
“I don’t want to impose, don’t worry about me.” I say. Childhood memories of breakfast with my mom and dad flood into my mind. Slightly toasted bread with butter and chocolate sprinkles and earl gray tea with too much sugar.
“She wants toasted bread with butter and chocolate sprinkles,” Kate says. “And earl gray tea.”
Walter laughs again. “Can’t hide anything from Kate. Well, unless you’re me. Alright, I’ll go get those.”
He takes a while to put on his shoes, walks back and forth into the kitchen looking for something a few times before he remembers to grab a plastic bag, then heads out with another pleasant laugh.
“You cannot read his thoughts?” I ask Kate. “Did you teach him that thing? Thinking without thinking?”
Kate shakes her head. “No. He could already do that by himself. He’s a very strange fellow. Knows things.”
“There’s a lot of special people around, aren’t there?”
“Yeah,” Kate answers. “Marieken, sit down, we need to talk.”
I get startled. Did I do anything wrong? Worse, is she going to throw me out already?
“I’m sorry for last night,” I say with a pained look on my face.
Kate shakes her head. “Sit down Marieken, if I was angry at you I would have told you.”
“Okay,” I reply while hesitantly taking my seat at the table.
She sits down across from me. “I’m a vampire,” she says. “Government rules mean I have to figure out how to get blood myself, and of course I get in serious trouble if I take it by force.”
I want to say something, but she hushes me to silence.
“Usually, we vampires find boyfriends or girlfriends. Preferably multiple, so the drain isn’t too heavy on any one of them. Though you understand, I hope, that this is effectively whoring ourselves out in exchange for blood. Regardless, I am not good at this. My current partner is ghosting me, and I am starving, going through withdrawal.”
I vaguely understand where this is going.
“I will take care of you, clean for you, cook for you. In exchange, when I am starving and have no access to other sources, will you provide me with blood?”
We’re quiet for a bit, mainly because I didn’t catch that that was a question. “You’re asking me?” I eventually ask back.
“Of course. I’m not going to force you to.”
“What if I say no?” I ask.
“Then I will starve and get weaker, until one morning you will find me in the kitchen, dead.”
Once again I am forced to confront the daily realities all the fantastical, magical beings I liked as a kid have to face. Moontouched, Vampires. We’re all shit out of luck.
“I- that’s awful. I’m sorry Kate. I’ll let you drink my blood. It- it doesn’t hurt, right?”
I try my absolute best to hide the confused emotions this is generating. The flashbacks to reading vampire novels and vividly trying to imagine how it would actually feel. This has the opposite effect, of course, and I know Kate must’ve seen my thoughts.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “It feels quite nice. There are hormones in my saliva that work like a drug. Make you happy, maybe a little slow for a bit.”
“Oh,” I say as I realize something. “I am on antipsychotics and suppressors. Is that okay?” “It’s not great but it won’t kill me either,” she answers.
I nod.
“Come,” she says as she gets up from her chair.
I look at her, puzzled.
“To my bedroom. It’s best to lay down, and since I want to take off my glasses I need it completely dark.”
To her bedroom. Laying down on Kate’s bed who I have only met two days ago to have her bite down on my neck. My heart rate accelerates almost to the level it had when I met the demon.
“Y- yeah,” I stammer. “That makes sense.”
Almost stalling, I slowly follow Kate to her room. Her room is different than I would’ve imagined. She comes across as harsh, almost cruel, despite her kind words. I also imagined her more goth or emo-like mentally. Probably because she’s a vampire, I realize. Instead, her room is mostly plushies, posters of idol bands, a collection of young adult romance books, and a pink macbook with Hello Kitty stickers on it.
Kate turns around, and looks at me. “How can you tell that well? It’s pitch black in here.”
“Huh? Oh! I discovered I can see perfectly in the dark yesterday. Probably part of my shadow powers.”
“I see,” Kate says, as she reaches under her desk and gets a small box. “A first aid kit,” she says. “Disinfectant and bandages.”
I get a little anxious and really hope that it won’t hurt.
“If you’re scared then the first time I can drink from your wrist instead of your throat. It’s harder for me, but it’s not like I need a lot of blood. Just enough to get by without starving to death.”
The mental image of Kate pushing me down on her bed and sinking her teeth into my throat is overwhelming. Far too overwhelming. “Yeah,” I say. “That would be better, I think.”
She gestures for me to sit down on her bed, and sits down next to me. A little bit close next to me, and I instinctively inch away from her.
“Roll up your sleeve or take off your shirt,” she commands me as she taps me on my arm.
I’m not wearing a bra- I slapped on the first pair of pants and shirt I saw this morning- so I am not taking off my shirt. That’d make things awkward beyond belief. Luckily, the long-sleeved shirt isn’t very tight-fitting so I can easily roll up the sleeves.
Kate smiles, and takes off her glasses. Her eyes are beautiful, a sort of darkly luminescent red. Like faintly glowing steel, a rosy, distant red.
“Breathe in,” Kate commands me, “and breathe out.”
As I stare into her eyes and follow her instructions, I fall into a trance. Unlike what Juliet did to me, this feels nice. Not confusing or violating, gentle. It’s like I’m barely there, like I left Kate alone with my body on her bed. She lifts up my arm, and brings it to her mouth. I want to flinch, but I find my mind too distant from my body to really react. Her exposed fangs create an almost primal terror in my heart, but one glance from her eyes makes me calm down again. It hurts as she bites down into my wrist, but only for a second. Then, a warm, pleasant feeling slowly washes over my arm, and from there ever so slowly over the rest of my body. I giggle as Kate pulls her teeth out of the wound she has created, and puts her lips to my wrist to suck out blood.
“Are you doing okay?” She whispers after a minute or so. “That’s quite enough, I think.”
Entranced by her eyes and high from the ecstatic feeling of having my blood drunk, I can only weakly nod and giggle. Smiling, she takes her first aid kit and wipes down the two puncture holes with disinfectant. The wounds are bleeding quite profusely, I realize. I would be in serious trouble if she didn’t bandage them.
She then starts wrapping bandages around my wrist. “They’re also disinfectant, so the chance of you getting an infected wound or getting sick is very small. I’ll look after your wounds in the coming days, and if something doesn’t look good, I’ll have Walter take you to the doctor, okay?”
I nod. Kate is going to look after my wounds. I wonder if she’ll let me look into her eyes again.
“God,” Kate says, laughing. It sounds shrill, and I wonder why she’s always so hoarse. Shouldn’t a pretty girl like Kate have a pretty voice? “You are so goddamn out of it,” she says. “Weirdo.”
I giggle and I nod yes. I am a weirdo. I let myself fall backwards onto her bed, and let the delightful combination of feelings rummaging through my head carry me back into sleep.
~
When I come to, more than an hour has passed. I feel better rested than I have in a very long time, since way before I found out I was moontouched. The bandages on my arm have been replaced, and only small two rust-brown dots have formed. Maybe it’s something to do with the hormones in vampire saliva, making my wounds heal faster. In the living room, Walter and Kate are busy making an extensive albeit somewhat belated breakfast.
“Hey,” Kate whispers. She’s got her sunglasses back on, which is a shame. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”
“Really well actually,” I say. “Like some burden has fallen from my shoulders.”
“Nice,” Walter says. “Maybe now I won’t be as anemic during work anymore.”
That stings. I feel somewhat jealous, but also realize it’s not my place to be jealous- Kate needs blood, or she dies. I join them making lunch, making sure my bread is exactly as toasted as I like it. Walter has bought a lot more than I anticipated, so there’s croissants to eat as well and different kinds of fruit spreads.
“Stuff was discounted, don’t feel bad about eating it all,” he says while gesturing at the now well-set table. “Helps with the lightheadedness as well.”
Kate taps me on my arm, and I show her the bandages. “Those are healing incredibly fast,” she whispers.
“I thought that might have something to do with you?” She shakes her head. “No, not me.”
I shrug and sit down at the table. It’s comfy, the three of us. If I didn’t plan on going back to my parents as soon as possible I might even be able to imagine living here.
“Are you doing anything this Saturday?” Walter asks. “I’m going to watch sitcoms so if you have nothing to do feel free to join.”
“I don’t know,” I answer. “I’ll check my phone, some friends might want to talk to me.”
Breakfast feels at once nostalgic and new. I’ve only just met these people, and eating my childhood comfort food while sort of living out my childhood daydreams with them makes it all a little overwhelming. When I’ve eaten my fill, drank my tea and my orange juice, I check my phone. Six missed calls from Robin. I think about returning a call for a moment, but decide against it. I can’t really bring myself to talk to Robin right now, and besides, I barely know him.
I’ve gotten several whatsapp messages from Hiro.
‘U ok? Did u get home safe?’, ‘If u died on the way home let me know’, and ‘I know a good noodle stand near our school. If ur still alive want 2 hang out?’
I message him to let him know I’m fine, and that I might come back on those noodles later. Last, there’s a message from Noor.
‘Sareth says sorry’, then a smiley followed by ‘Want to hang out? We’re smoking weed in your schoolyard.’
That feels a little scary. My last interaction with Sareth and her friends was excessively bad, and my last interaction with Noor with other people present was also not great. But then again, if Noor has intervened on my behalf, it might be good to make things right with Sareth. If I could just explain I’m not what they all think they are, that I’m like them, then I might just be able to go to school without being scared of them. Hell, I might be able to finally integrate with other Moontouched. By now, if I could sit and eat with Maria and Theresa, I’d gladly wash the paint out of my hair. Jan and Amy haven’t exactly been good friends to me. I decide to message Noor that I’m on my way.
“I’m going to hang out with some friends from school,” I tell Kate and Walter. “I might go get noodles with another friend in the evening, but I’ll be home before that and let you all know, alright?”
“Alright,” Walter says and Kate whispers.
I rush to my room to put on something to hide my injury, and settle on my Maria Mithras sweater. Somewhat hastily, I brush my hair and check if my face looks presentable in the bathroom mirror. Then, I’m off. School is within walking distance from here, but it’s still a good fifteen minutes away. The entire way there, I’m plagued with anxiety and an elevated heartbeat. Still, it’s nothing compared to meeting the nightmare demon. Additionally, I’m probably still somewhat high from the things Kate did to me, and that helps. When I reach the inner schoolyard, I immediately spot Sareth, Theresa and Maria sitting on the concrete ping pong table. They wave at me, and I wave back as I approach them.
I wonder where Noor is as Maria and Theresa get up and approach me.
“Hey” - Before I can say anything else, Maria punches me in the stomach at full force.
Reeling from the sudden pain, I fall to my knees. The two Mirror Court sisters then each twist one of my arms behind my back, and drag me back up to my feet.
“Help,” I cry. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I thought you wanted to see me. Noor told me.”
Neither of them answer. I try to wriggle out of their hold, but they just twist my arms further up my back until my shoulders feel like they’re on fire, and I’m forced to stop resisting.
“Well well well,” Sareth says, as she hops off the ping pong table and walks up to me. “If it isn't everyone's favourite little undercover shadow girl.”
“I didn’t do anything to you,” I yelp in pain. “Why are you doing this to me?”
I suddenly remember the murders. Right. The murders. The murders that Sareth probably did. I feel unfathomably stupid for not thinking about that fifteen minutes ago.
Sareth spits, and I flinch. Her phlegm hits the ground before me.
“Sareth,” I cry. “Please. I’m Moontouched. My life is in shambles too. I’ve looked up to you, Maria and Theresa for the past two years at school. Noor said things would be okay.”
“Noor,” Sareth laughs. “Noor says whatever I want her to say.”
“Please,” I whisper. “Don’t kill me.”
“Let me explain a few things,” Sareth says. “Both to get me into the proper mental state, and so that you understand why, exactly, I hate you so much.”
“Please,” I repeat.
“First I will explain to you about the world, and then about my place in it,” Sareth begins. “This world is fucked beyond recognition. One night, magic became real again. The new Aeon, that Crowley had predicted, dawned. But instead of elevating humankind to a new level, instead of allowing for evolution to run its course, the governments of this world banded together to kill this magic. Magic. The thing little girls dream of. And us, of course. We have to die. This is their world, the humans their world and there is no place for us in it. Doesn’t that bring you to rage? Doesn’t that make you want to burn it all down?”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes,” I say again. Before I can say anything else, Sareth kicks me in the stomach.
“Bullshit,” she says. “Here you sit, with your painted hair and your expensive pants and hoodie. You don’t want to burn down shit. You, you want to be a human.” She spits when she says ‘human’.
“Aren’t,” I manage to say while coughing up vomit from her kick. “You human too? You’re not Moontouched right?”
“That brings me to my second point,” Sareth says with a sadistic smile on her face. “My place in this world. See, since I was a little kid I’ve known I was different. Special. I waited for my hair to turn white for months after Maria and Theresa turned. Months turned to years. Eventually I realized it wasn’t happening. This world with magic in it, and I was one of the villains. This feeling eventually turned into resentment, and resentment turned into entitlement. Do you know what fuels Witches’ magic, Marieken?”
“Narcissism,” I say. “The honest belief that the entire world should change to suit your needs.”
“Very good,” Sareth says, clapping as she does. “My belief is that I’m owed magic. That I deserve to get all the magic in the world, and that I will get to trample this filthy human world underfoot. Ten years from now, me and my two beautiful wives are living in a palace, attended to by human servants.”
She’s delusional, I realize. Then again, aren’t I as well?
“You’re insane,” I say. “You’re going to kill me over that?”
“I am going to take away your magic,” Sareth says. “Dying is a side effect of that.”
She puts her left hand around my throat. It feels more like a steel clamp closing around my throat. As she does so, Maria and Theresa let go of me. I grab ahold of Sareth’s arm to try and pull it from my throat, but it doesn’t budge.
“Mine,” Sareth says. “You didn’t deserve this to begin with.”
A horrific pain shoots through my body. I can feel my shadow, my inner shadow, my shadow-soul, tearing free from my body. I try to scream, but she’s got my windpipe crushed.
I am going to die, it shoots through my head as I feel her tugging at my soul. Stripping away little strands of shadowy power as she slowly ups the pressure. My entire being is going to be sucked away. And for what. She’s delusional. Then again, aren’t I as well? My ID card says ‘Mithras’. My dad never filled out my adoption forms. My parents were never going to take me back home. Tears fill my eyes. It’s unfair that I have to confront this right now. I wish I could’ve died happy, thinking of Kate’s beautiful eyes, looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again and introducing Robin and Ruby-Lynn to my father.
It’s about delusions, I realize. About belief. I try to believe that I can escape, that I can shadow-step away from her grip, but I can’t. The antipsychotics cloud my brain too much for the required mental images, and even if I could push through that, her grip on my throat is stronger than steel. It isn’t fair, I want to scream. These powers are mine. Mine. Mine and mine alone. After all the misery I’ve been through, I should’ve been allowed to play with my second shadow more, to teleport around and to scare Robin by turning into a shadowy mass of tentacles and eyes.
As I mentally cry out in anguish, a sound- or rather a sensation- akin to a jet engine starting builds up in my soul. Mine. These powers are mine. They’re not Sareths. I’m the one who scored ninety five on the Paraphysics Aptitude test, the second highest ever. If she wants to make this a competition of entitlement, I’ll show her.
Deep inside me, the jet engine flares to life. I understand what Hiro said now. I couldn’t sense my own power before, how deep a well of energy it was. Now that I can, I almost drown into it.
But no matter how much I struggle against Sareth, I cannot stop the flow. Darkness steadily gets drained away. I close my eyes and try to focus on Sareth her power, Sareth her soul. It’s a tiny pinprick compared to my own, I tell myself. If she wants my power, she can have it. She can drown in it.
That’s it, I realize. The mental image required to beat her.
I give her all of it. I extend my entire mind, shadow and soul into Sareth’s body. More power than she could ever hope for. I pour it all into her, and it washes her soul along into a torrent of shadow. I close my eyes just in time for her eyes to go wide. She cancels her spell, but it is too late. My power recedes back into me, dragging her along with it. Sareth's empty body lets go of my neck, and stumbles for a bit before falling over backwards. Inside the endless well of shadow deep inside me, I can feel her cry. Feel her struggle not to dissolve, not to be digested by my soul. The roar of the jet engine overpowers her cries as they get softer, and eventually fade. Maria and Theresa both scream. I turn around, and see them. See two frightened, pathetic Moontouched who thought Sareth was their god, their savior.
They turn and run.
Completely out of it, I look at my hands. They’re still the same hands I’ve always had. Behind me, I hear a voice.
“So it was you.”
I turn around to face Hiro. “No,” I say. “She started it.”
Hiro is paler than ever. He grips his katana in both hands, in a pose ready to strike.
“It’s overwhelming. You’re even stronger now. I don’t know how you managed to hide your power in between your murders, but I cannot let this continue. You’ll become unstoppable,” Hiro says.
Murders? I didn’t do that. That was Sareth.
“Marieken Mithras,” Hiro solemnly says. “On my honour as a ninja, for the murder of three high school students, I hereby sentence you to death.”
~
Hiro looks at me, frightened, while I can’t stop looking at my hands. I’ve killed Sareth. What’s more, I can feel an excess of power in my mind. In my blood. It’s drowning out the dampening effects of the medication in a terrifying roar.
“I didn’t do it,” I mumble while staring at my hands. “It was self defense.”
As I turn to face Hiro, he charges me with his katana. He’s incredibly fast, and my first reflex is to flinch backwards. I find myself about ten meters back, in the shadow of the school building. A shadow-step.
“Hiro!” I yell. “I’m not the murderer.”
“I saw you kill Sareth with my own eyes, demon!”
For a second I think he believes me anyway, because he sheathes his katana. Then he crouches down, and I realize what he’s about to do. I narrowly manage to dodge to the side as he rushes forward with supernatural speed, unsheathing his katana mid-flight and cutting a massive gash into the wall where I was standing a moment ago.
“Hiro!” I scream.
“I can see auras, Marieken.” He’s sad. Solemn. Like he’s grieving. “I saw what you did to Sareth. You ate her. Three murders do not explain your overwhelming amount of power, Marieken. I know you must’ve done this more often.”
“I didn’t!”
He comes at me, again, or so it seems for a second. Instead of drawing his katana, he dodges to the side at the last second and hurries through a series of gestures with his hands. He splits into six, and he and his clones surround me.
“I thought we were friends,” I yelp.
“I thought so too,” I hear from six voices at once.
“Hiro, stop!” I scream. He doesn’t give any indication he’s hearing any more.
I’ve got my back to the wall, literally and metaphorically. If I don’t know which Hiro is the real Hiro, I can’t dodge his attacks. And if he won’t stop, he’s going to kill me.I can’t kill Hiro the way I’ve killed Sareth. Hiro is a good person. I’ll run instead, I decide and try to imagine being a shadow. I am a shadow fleeing along the shadows on the wall, I am a shadow fleeing along the shadows on the wall I repeat to myself as I close my eyes. I’m successful but only for a short distance before the wall spits me out again. Behind me, Hiro runs along it, katana outstretched.
“Hiro!” I don’t know what to do but scream again. I can’t focus on the mental images required for long enough. The clouds in my brain won’t let me think of things that aren’t real.
He catches up to me and swings for my neck. I reflexively close my eyes and throw up my arms in a futile effort to not be beheaded, and to my surprise it works. When I open my eyes, I see an oddly flat, fluid black shape has sprouted from the ground and caught Hiro’s sword in mid air. A tentacle of solid darkness. I try to think back to the incident with my mom, when I no longer was Marieken but instead was fully consumed by what I later learned was my ‘penumbra’, the part of my shadow-soul that mixes with the light of this world. I fail, and Hiro manages to cut the shadowy tentacle in half and immediately swings at me again. I stumble backwards, and a sharp pain shoots through my arm, followed by an immediate icy numbness spreading from my wrist, upward. The only warmth I can still feel on that arm that of a warm fluid-
My brain isn’t working properly. I keep spiraling into these distracting trains of thoughts. Blood pours down my arm and I see my right hand lie on the pavement. For the second time today, I fall to my knees in pain, grasping at the stump of my wrist, desperately trying to keep the blood inside my body.
“I don’t wanna die,” I cry, as Hiro switches his katana to a reverse grip, and turns around. “Perish,” he says as he drives his sword backwards with both hands, straight through my chest.
I’ve never felt pain before in my life, I realize as the katana shatters the cartilage between my ribs, cuts through the fatty tissue above my spine and pierces my spine, erupting from my back. True pain, a pain that slows down time enough for me to feel every single splinter of cartilage from my ribcage penetrate my lungs like a shot of hail.
“It wasn’t like that,” I try to say, but all my lungs produce is blood. I cough and convulse as Hiro pulls his katana out of my body again. Everytime I instinctively try to breathe in, all I feel is blood and blood and blood and I start coughing again. I won’t ever manage to cough up enough to be able to breathe again, I realize. This is how I’m going to die.
I’ve thought that before, earlier today. When Sareth had me in a chokehold and was sucking out my very soul, I thought I was going to die. I wonder how this is different from that, as I lose the ability to cough and an icy chill crawls through my body. Probably because I lost a hand and several internal organs this time, instead of something so ephemeral as ‘pieces of my soul’. As the puddle of blood around me stops growing, I feel oddly at peace, and sharp. Like I can clearly see for the first time in weeks. It’s strange, I realize, to treat my soul as some ephemeral abstraction, something unimportant, as opposed to my body. Isn’t my soul much more important? I was warned that taking enough magic suppressors would cause me to vanish, because I’m ‘made of magic’.
Then, isn’t my soul much more concrete, and my body an afterthought?
My body is only here to cast my shadow on the wall, after all. Most of it is still here, too. Melting into a living shadow was a mental image, and coming back was letting go of that image. What if I do that in reverse? What if I let go of the mental image of having a body and melt into shadow? Then, wouldn’t I just have to imagine having a body to reconstitute it from its component parts?
Smiling, I let go, and I die.
Or rather, what is ‘I’ stops, and another ‘I’ takes its place almost immediately. This ‘I’ is a mass of shadow, omnipresent wherever the light is not. Having let go of the illusion of a body, I no longer need a brain to process the visual input of the eyes that sprout along the shadows on the school’s enclosed inner yard.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hiro says as he turns around and sees shadows with teeth and eyes shrinking into humanoid form as I am reconstituted.
I’ve done it. I’ve reassembled my entire body down to the last atom by forming a picture of ‘me’ in my mind. I laugh, a roaring, maniacal laugh. From the corner of my eyes, I spot my hair. I ruffle through it with my hands, and smile. A beautiful silver-white.
“Forbidden demon technique - soulless sword!” I hear Hiro yell a couple meters away from me as he cuts his left hand open with his own katana. A frightful aura envelops the sword.
“Hiro,” I say, laughing. “You can stop now.”
“You are no longer human,” he says, spitting on the ground. “I’ve never seen anyone casually come back to life. Not ever. Did you burn one of the souls of the kids you killed as some perverted form of a one-up?”
“Hiro,” I say, now angry. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill the others. Sareth tried to kill me and I reversed her spell, turned it on herself. I almost died.”
“I have a hard time believing that from someone indistinguishable from a Nightmare Demon, Marieken. Did you see yourself just now? A mass of eyes and smiling teeth. I don’t believe you.”
“If you want to fight,” I say, as my anger grows and slowly envelops me, “I can’t promise I won’t kill you.”
I am me. I am myself. Right now, I am the single most important person in my life. I’m probably the most powerful girl in the Shadow Court ever. If Hiro wants to fight so badly, he can get a fight. He rushes towards me for a rematch, sword enveloped in dark flames and blood running down the blade. He doesn’t understand what I am right now. That he isn’t running towards me, just towards my body. Every shadow my shadow touches is me. In this enclosed schoolyard, I am gigantic. I am a god. I emerge fully from the shadows, a mass of tentacles and eyes. Hiro’s eyes go wide as I skewer him with seven tentacles, as I sprout more mouths than he can count and rip him limb from limb, throwing every shred of flesh I shave off of him into a different mouth. Before I fully realize what I am doing I realize I have devoured a second person in less than thirty minutes after the first. First Sareth’s soul, now Hiro’s flesh.
As I become incarnate into a singular body with beautiful white hair again, I stare at my hands. It feels fitting. Soul and flesh, friend and foe. Light and dark.
These are insane thoughts, something whispers from my subconscious. On the ground, a second shadow sprouts from my feet.
Did I forget my medication when I reformatted my body?
「 Moonlight Cantata: Hiro’s World 」
Throughout the world, there must have been an uncountable amount of children reenacting their favourite cartoon on the playground. Most of them grew out of this, of course. And few actually believe themselves to be a Transformer or Jedi knight or hobbit, even if the boundaries between one’s self and one’s character during ‘play’ get blurry at a young age.
I was twelve when I accidentally threw a ki blast at another first grader in my high school. It wasn’t strong, and he got away with third degree burns. I got lucky too. I got away with a lifelong prescription of antipsychotics and a triple dose of suppressor meds after scoring fifty-five on Paraphysical Aptitude. Not everyone is that lucky. I’ve heard that over in the United States they lock you up for life. Denmark dissects high-scoring students and sells their blood to the highest bidder. When I was fourteen, I encountered my first Nightmare Demon. Unable to shake the juvenile feeling I was a superhero, destined for greatness, or special I went looking for it myself. I found it, and punched and kicked its skull in. That got me therapy. I was allowed to use my powers, but I wasn’t allowed to believe I was an anime ninja. That was paradoxical, of course, but there’s nobody with powers in the entire government hierarchy. They just don’t understand it.
“Doesn’t me being able to do anime ninja things mean that I am an anime ninja?” I frequently asked.
“Don’t let the schizophrenic thoughts win,” was the answer, and having my medication dose raised.
Nightmare Corruption. Destabilization. The supernatural encroaching on the natural. All symptoms of the same thing.
“The demon king is reawakening!” my subconsciousness yells at me, but I know that’s wrong. There’s no demon king. There’s no ninja clans. Those are stories my mind made up to cope with a world I do not understand, to safely channel powers I was not evolved to properly deal with. Collective belief in magic is the real problem. Too many people believe in the impossible nowadays, and making them not believe it is difficult with witches flying around on brooms and demons eating your coworkers. Ridicule is the answer. Make it lower class. Make it filthy. Make it something the mentally unwell get up to, something morally heinous you cannot steep to.
And it works wonders. Test scores are dropping, less children are being switched out by whatever mechanism replaces them with Moontouched, and less and less people get eaten by demons.
Part of that is on me, though.
Every week I get a list of haunted locales from Ms. Rosencrantz, and I head there with the katana she found for me. It’s a beautiful gift- a real cursed katana from ancient Japan. The perfect tool to amplify my specific schizophrenic ninja fantasies. And when I’m dashing straight through someone’s nightmares made manifest, I do feel like a ninja. It’s almost real. For a second I forget about the real nightmare.
For some reason they make me go to school. So that I can have a future after all of this, they say. It makes no sense to me. One of these days I either get ripped to shreds by a demon who turns out to be a little above my paygrade, or they manage to fix the destabilization of reality. And if they do, my powers will vanish along with the demons. My sword will become a normal historic artifact, no longer the legendary demonic blade. I will impale myself on top of it, and die together with the rest of the magic. This world rejected me, and I think I’d rather leave than stay behind, forever medicated. Powerless. Genuinely insane. Attached to delusions of the past.
Today I’m not fighting a nightmare demon. Today I’m fighting real evil. In front of me is Marieken Mithras, who is a veritable hurricane of Paraphysical power. Enough to break the world three times over. This should entice me. This should charm me. Perhaps, ages ago, I would’ve been charmed. I would’ve pledged to her my blade- if only she would overthrow this rotten world.
Marieken has killed several of her schoolmates. Marieken, from a selfish desire for power, has drained the very soul out of one of her classmates and most likely several more. Juliet had me take her to fight a nightmare demon, and it terrified her. Broke her. I wonder if this world scares her, that she thinks she needs more power. She’s worse off than I am, I realize. When the magic disappears, so will she. She’s not human, more like a spirit.
“Marieken Mithras,” I solemnly tell her. “On my honour as a ninja, for the murder of three high school students- I sentence you to death!”
My honour as a ninja. Despite hating this world, I cling to childish delusions of cartoon heroes who stand up for the common folk. Real world ninja were assassins for hire. Contract killers. I know all that- but I’m delusional, not a historian.
A girl is dead on the pavement in front of me, and Marieken did that. Marieken, who I thought was pretty cute. Who talked to me despite everything. She doesn’t even listen to my judgment. She’s staring at her hands, a maniacal smile on her face, mumbling something I can’t make out. I have to take her out before she grows worse. I dash for her, and swing at her with my beloved sword. She dodges- no- she teleports out of my way. One moment she’s there, another moment she’s standing in the shadow of the school walls.
Teleporting from shadow to shadow. Cute trick. She would’ve made one hell of a ninja.
“Hiro!” She yells at me. “I’m not the murderer!”
“I saw you kill Sareth with my own eyes, demon,” I spit back at her. I have to dehumanize her. I can’t cut down a pretty girl I go to math class with. I can cut down demons. I’ve done so before.
If she teleports, I just have to hit her fast and hard enough that she can’t react. I sheathe my katana, and crouch down. Quick-draw rushdown technique, activate.
Still, she manages to dodge. I cut a massive gash into the school building and can already hear Ms. Rosencrantz yell at me for causing property damage in my mind.
“Hiro!” She screams at me. Her voice is full of fear. Is fear what drove her to do this?
“I can see auras, Marieken,” I explain to her. “I saw what you did to Sareth. You ate her. Three murders do not explain your overwhelming amount of power, Marieken. I know you must’ve done this more often.”
“I didn’t,” she says, still with that maniacal grin on her face. Still staring at her hands. It makes it difficult to believe her, as much as I would want to.
She’s too fast to land a straightforward attack on. Instead, I rush towards her while activating my clone jutsu. Several copies of me help me surround her, back her into a corner.
“I thought we were friends,” she begs. “I thought so too,” I answer her.
Duty comes before friendship. Otherwise I would have abandoned this path long ago, would have given my loyalty to a cult instead of Ms. Rosencrantz. Again, she teleports, but too soon this time. I can predict where she’s going, and dash after her. I’m faster than a car, and with a little luck she has some kind of cooldown on her teleport ability.
She has. She can’t dodge, and throws up her arms while reflexively staggering backwards. I didn’t expect her to do that, so instead of her head, I take one of her hands off. There’s no recovering from this injury, though. She’s out of the fight. Still, I can sense her aura. Dark, deep and full of rage. A power that can easily devour the world when unchecked.
I have to stop her. “I don’t want to die,” she begs and cries, falling to her knees.
I know Marieken, I say to myself. I don’t wanna die either. I wish we’d both lived in a different world, one better suited for the kinds of people we are.
I can’t look her in the face while I do it, so I turn around. I try to sound strong as I drive my sword backwards, and through her chest. She falls over, dead, and I feel the hurricane of psychic power subsiding. Finally peace and quiet.
“I’m sorry Marieken,” I tell her corpse. I watch the puddle of blood around her body slowly grow until I can no longer bring myself to bear witness to this grisly sight. Still, I do not want to forget it. I want it etched on my soul.
I turn around, and walk away. As I do so, Marieken’s aura flares back to life, a hundred-fold stronger than it was before.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” as I turn around to face Marieken’s second form. Her body has molten into a dark puddle, a shadowy mass quickly expanding to fill the entire schoolyard. A thousand eyes and mouths look at me from the darkness. So this is what Marieken really is. A hungry mass of shadow.
The shadows condense and merge, turning back into a girl. She’s got stark white hair now, and purple eyes.
If she can just come back to life, I’ll have to cut down her soul along with her body.
“Forbidden demon technique - soulless sword!” I yell as I feed my blade my own blood, awakening the Nightmare Demon trapped inside the sword.
“Hiro,” Marieken laughs. “You can stop now.” Her voice is inhuman, projected directly into my head. She sounds just like a Nightmare Demon.
“You are no longer human,” I tell her. “I’ve never seen anyone casually come back to life. Not ever. Did you burn one of the souls of the kids you killed as some perverted form of a one-up?”
I want to be wrong. I want her to tell me I’m wrong. I want her to tell me she didn’t just expend Sareth’s life for another shot at life herself.
“Hiro,” she says, angry enough to almost blow me off my feet. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill the others. Sareth tried to kill me and I reversed her spell, turned it on herself. I almost died.”
“I have a hard time believing that from someone indistinguishable from a Nightmare Demon, Marieken. Did you see yourself just now? A mass of eyes and smiling teeth. I don’t believe you, Marieken.”
“If you want to fight,” she says, her anger making way for a playfully sadistic growl, “I can’t promise I won’t kill you.”
She seems to take pleasure in taunting me like this.
With my sword awakened, I am much, much faster than a car. Closer to a jet. I can feel it hunger, feel it draw itself towards Marieken’s overwhelming amount of lifeforce like a magnet. I dash towards her for the umpteenth time today.
In less than a thousandth of a second, she falls apart into a mass of shadow again. Tentacles shoot at me from all directions faster than I could ever hope to be, impaling me.
My eyes go wide as hungry mouths open up in the shadows around me. What a fucking shitshow, I think as my limbs are torn from my body and Marieken devours me.