CW: blood, gore, surgery, body horror, sudden death, violence, knives, injury, broken bones, extreme ableism (anti-Cluster B), alcohol, emotional abuse, permanent D/S relationship, alternate personalities, loss of bodily control, thought-action fusion, apocalyptic ideation, demonic possession
Jeremiah Amberson
I crawl through an alleyway in the southern part of Amsterdam on three limbs, dragging my all-important briefcase after me. There’s no real reason to, but I felt like it and there aren’t usually many people around to start complaining about that sort of thing in backalleys anyway. And even if there were, this isn’t exactly a reputable part of town. At the end of the alley is a dumpster, and if my nose is not deceiving me, I’m about to hit the jackpot.
“Oh, hiiiiiiiii,” I say as I open the dumpster and look into the cold, glassy eyes of a moontouched girl. “Jeremy moment,” I snicker to myself as I drag her out of her grave. This is no place to bury a girl, I mentally complain. Ah well. Upsides and downsides. If she’d been buried in a reputable place for such things then I wouldn’t have found her or been able to get to her.
I dust off my tweed jacket- it’s gotten all dirty from crawling around- and kick open my briefcase. My beautiful assortment of knives, tweezers, needles and stitching wire gleam in what little light of the moon reaches this dark and filthy corner.
“You must’ve wanted so much from life that you never got,” I whisper to the girl as open her blouse. It’s all torn and caked in blood and mud. “Don’t worry,” I say as I caress her head, play with her beautiful silver hair. “We’ll buy you a new one.”
Cause of death: multiple stab wounds to the abdomen. Time of death: about a day ago. Perfect. First thing to do is clean her wounds, and stitch them shut. I have to remove more of her clothes to properly reach them, which is a little awkward, but I remind myself I am a doctor and used to seeing bodies. Nothing weird about this. When I’ve properly cleaned up her wounds and applied stitching- beautiful work as always, I compliment myself- I grab my largest scalpel and make an incision into her chest, right next to her breast. It’s grotesque work, reaching the heart- if only human beings did not have ribcages and sheets of cartilage guarding their hearts.
An apt metaphor for society, the way we guard our hearts. I chuckle to myself as I grab my bonesaw and cutter. “Don’t worry, dear. You can bare your heart to me.”
It’s gruesome work, opening her chestcage so I can expose her heart. With crunches and squelching I dig into her chest, and manage to clear space around the organ. She’s been dead long enough that she doesn’t really bleed, which helps. Her flesh has gone dark, and what little droplets of fresh blood remain are caked between a coagulated, brown mush.
I reach into my briefcase and grab my spools of thread. “What’s a good colour for you?” I whisper to her. Blue? No. Red? No. “You’re a special girl and you deserve a special thread, don’t you?”
With the gentlest of care I tie a golden string around her heart. It’s difficult, but I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty digging through her flesh to get a proper loop around her heart. I make a pretty tie into the thread, and smile. “You’re going to be alright.”
Closing up the chest cavity and my incision in such a way that she doesn’t look completely butchered is hard, but I’ve practiced a lot over the years. When I’m done with my art, three large stitches over her chest keeping her skin more or less flush to her body are all that remain.
I tie a second piece of golden string around my ringfinger, and put my hand on her forehead.
“I’m not going to lie to you, this is going to hurt. A lot. Brace yourself, dear.”
As I reach for the obsidian black gateway I found in the deepest reaches of my subconscious and will it open, the girl starts to scream. I try to contain a maniacal laugh, but my more base self gets the better of me. “Muahahahaha, she walks again,” I howl to the moon.
The corpse-girl before me thrashes and screams and gasps for breath with lungs that no longer work. She claws around, and eventually manages to focus her gaze on me.
“What?” she moans. “What- my head. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. I need to go- go to go to a doctor. Help me.”
“I am a doctor,” I say triumphantly. “I’ve put you back together.”
“No,” she says. “Something’s wrong with me. It hurts.”
She tries to crawl away, so I tug on the string on my finger and pull her back by the invisible cord that now binds us.
“What?” she yammers. “No, please, don’t hurt me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say. “I’ve pulled you back from the cold depths of death. You got stabbed, I think, and then dumped into that dumpster over there.”
“No!” she screams. “No! No! I’m not dead!”
“Shhhh,” I shush her, putting a finger to her lips. “I’ll help you get up. Let’s get you cleaned up. I have some clothes in my lair, and then we can go clothes shopping for something nicer tomorrow.”
“Your lair? I don’t know you. Get away from me.”
I tug on the thread on my finger and tighten my leash on her. She calms down, and obediently nods. With my new prize in thrall, I start to make my way back home. Best to avoid the streets if you’re walking with a girl wearing ruined shreds of clothing, covered in blood. Even in the middle of the night, you never know who you’ll run into.
I bring her to my “lair,” which seems to have been on-site housing for some now-abandoned construction project to expand the mall. Must’ve been from before the nightmare demons moved into the mall. It’s nothing special, but it has running water, a small shower, a little kitchen and more than enough beds for my entire family.
Emily comes shambling up to me as I enter. “Dr. Jeremiah, you’re back. And you brought someone.”
“This one’s just risen, she’s very traumatized and doesn’t really get what’s going on yet. Can you put her under the shower and get her some clothes, tuck her into a bed? She’ll feel better in the morning.”
The dead don’t sleep, but as my mother always chided me: even if you’re just laying down with your eyes closed, you’re still resting. I pour myself a mug of cold, stale coffee, rinse my mouth with mouthwash and go to sleep under my work desk myself.
One short night of the same dream as always- six hours of an empty, black field with a chill wind howling though the sky- I crawl back out from under my desk. I’m starting to stink a little, so I kick off my pants, my shirt and my tweed jacket and cover myself in deodorant. I put on one of the identical sets of clothing I keep in a trunk near my desk. Outside my little office space is a commotion, and I wonder what could have gotten the corpses so riled up.
“Hey hey, what’s poppin, what’s the buzz?” I yell at Giselle and Emily.
“There’s police at the door,” Giselle yells back. She and Emily are currently blocking the door, preventing some men from coming in.
“Hello officers, what seems to be the problem?” I ask, putting on my best idea of an innocent, calming smile. Outside my lair are six police officers and two men from the Ministry of Mysterious Business. Men in black.
“Are you Jeremiah Amberson?” one of the men in black barks at me.
“DOCTOR Jeremiah Amberson, but my friends call me Jeremy. If this is about last night-”
“We’re asking the questions. Do you have your Peripheral Demographic registration papers?” “Ugh,” I groan. What is with these people? “Yeah yeah, I’ll go grab them.”
I go back in, grab my briefcase and let it fall open in front of the cops. Their hands move to their firearms as they see the knives and other surgical tools.
“Those are for work,” I grumble as I pull out my identity papers.
“Hrmph,” one of the men in black grunts as he snatches them out of my hands. “Dr. Jeremiah Amberson. Antisocial Personality Disorder, Schizoaffective Disorder, Necrophiliac. Necromancer?”
“That’s actually a really insulting term in the deathwright community,” I protest.
“Sure it is. You’re coming along. The Ministry of Mysterious Business wants to talk to you. Get in the car.”
“Euh, I’m kind of on a busy schedule."
“We’re not asking.”
“Alright. Giselle, please take good care of the new girl. Make sure she settles in and feels welcome, okay?”
“I will,” the corpse says, waving after me as the two men in black hurry me into their car.
[Chapter Break]
Tjeerd Durst
“What is this?” I ask the waiter at the Dragon’s Lounge. I point at the meal in front of me.
“It’s our house specialty. The Man in The Back had it prepared specially for you, free of charge.”
“The house speciality,” I say, making a smacking sound with my lips after every word.
“With compliments from The Man in The Back.”
On my plate in front of me is some meat in a puddle of broth, surrounded by steamed vegetables.
“And the house specialty, that would be?”
“I’m sure you are aware of the niche but exquisite reputation of our establishment,” the waiter says.
“Right,” I say. “If you had to choose a Hogwarts House, which would you choose?”
“Excuse me?” He’s clearly doing his best to sound polite, but surprise isn’t all that’s leaking through his intonation.
“Your Hogwarts House,” I repeat.
“I don’t see-”
“If you had to choose. If you absolutely had to pick a Hogwarts House, which would you choose?”
“Euh, the one Ron is in.”
“The house Ron is in. And which is that?”
The waiter nervously moves his legs around, as if he’s unsure if he should just leave or entertain me for a minute longer.
“Sir, I am almost fifty. I don’t spend a lot of time-”
“It’s one of, if not the, most popular movie franchise in recent history.”
The waiter stares at me. He doesn’t answer.
“You know the four Hogwarts houses, don’t you? Even if you don’t care about Harry Potter, there’s no way you can have avoided basic knowledge of the franchise through pop-cultural osmosis.”
“Sir, I have other guests to attend to.”
I take a deep breath. The waiter nervously swallows. “WHAT HOGWARTS HOUSE. WOULD YOU BE IN. IF YOU HAD TO PICK A HOGWARTS HOUSE.”
The rest of the restaurant stops. All heads turn towards my table. The guests range from sharply dressed business men, to shady figures well-practiced at hiding the fangs jutting out of their mouth, to Witches in their ridiculous getups. The Belle Epoque style of the main lounge, the silver chandeliers and the expensive paintings betray that these aren’t a random collection of Periphery Demographics, but the haute culture, the cutting edge, the avant garde of Amsterdam’s underworld of depravity and disease.
“Lionheart,” the waiter stammers. “I’d be in Lionheart.”
“Lionheart,” I laugh. “Everyone, the man’s Hogwarts House of choice is ‘Lionheart’.”
Most other guests look on in shock, but a few snicker at the waiter.
“You think ‘Lionheart’ is a Hogwarts house,” I confirm.
“Sir, I have-”
He does not finish his sentence. He stumbles around for a second, then falls over, face first, and slams into the ground. Around me visitors gasp for breath or look away, but the restaurant crew springs into action. Two waiters remove the dead waiter from the floor, and another calls down a manager who starts to profusely apologize to me. Apologizing for what they were thinking, saying that The Man in the Back meant no insult, that all food today is on the house and if I want a replacement meal.
“The usual,” I say, staring him in the eyes. He fiddles with his tie, as if it’s constricting his airflow.
“Of course sir." He hurries to the kitchen. Slowly, calm returns to the restaurant. As I wait for them to prepare my dish, my favourite meal- my ‘date’ arrives. An elderly man who had requested to speak with me. He doesn’t look Dutch. I squint and try to make out his race, but I’ve never been good at telling apart my fellow humans. I listen to his accent, but all it reminds me of is a species from Star Wars, which tells me nothing.
“My name is Qiang Li, and I represent the group known as the Falun Gong. Do you know about us?”
“Euh." I hate it when others make me feel stupid for not knowing something.
“We are a religious group of Chinese expats working in this country, among other things we organize the Shen Yun theater.”
It really doesn’t ring a bell. He’s Chinese? I try to remember ‘this is what Chinese people look like’ but there just isn’t any space in my brain. It just doesn’t feel important to me the way the recent lore changes to Doctor Who feel important to me.
“Ah yes, of course,” I lie. “How could I forget?”
“Our group has recently been declared a Periphery Demographic,” the man explains.
“What, the Chinese? All of them? That feels vaguely racist.”
“No, the Falun Gong. As you might know, we are fugitives from China because the communist government sees our adherence to the traditional ‘qigong’ martial art as a threat.”
I know about that, I realize. That’s in Dungeons and Dragons. No idea that was a real thing- but then again, aren’t most things real nowadays?
“I see, I see."
“And this reclassification by your government means that in addition to previous anti-Chinese racism, we now face persecution by other Periphery Demographics who see us as a new group muscling in on their territory.”
“Right." I have an idea where this is going.
“Recently, a witch has started selling businesses anti-Chinese spells as part of the pushback on perceived Falun Gong encroachment on some Periphery Demographic gang's territory. This has not just affected us, of course, but the entire Chinese community in this city.”
“Hmhm,” I nod.
“I have heard you are the kind of person to talk to if you need someone removed from the local scene in an inconspicuous way.”
“Perhaps,” I say. “I’d like to know from whom.”
“I can’t reveal my sources, obviously,” the man says. What was his name again? Shen something?
“Obviously if you give me a picture and a memo with some information on your target I can see what can be done,” I explain. “But if you can’t reveal your source, the price will go up.”
“Money is no concern,” the man says as he pulls a stack of paper guilders from his coat.
I flip through the currency and count about ten thousand guilders in paper. I refrain from pointing out that this is about double what I would usually be paid. I nod. The man then slides me a picture of a boy? Probably? With black hair and the scruffiest outfit I have ever seen in my life.
“What is he supposed to be, Goth Robin Hood?”
“Yes,” the man says, excited. “You know him then. Good.”
“Ah, euh, yeah, I know most people around here,” I lie.
“Well then, we have a deal. The second half of your payment will follow on completion of your contract.”
I’m being paid even more? Something isn’t right.
“Hey,” I start. I want to ask ‘this guy isn’t secretly ridiculously strong, right’ but then I realize I’ve already pretended I knew exactly who he was talking about. I’d make a fool of myself if I start asking questions now, after already accepting the hit.
“Hm?” The man asks.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” I quickly say. The man nods, and reaches across the table to shake my hand. We shake on it, and as he prepares to leave I notice my waiter coming up to the table.
My business partner looks on first in confusion, then in disbelief while nervously chuckling as the waiter reveals my meal. A deep fried, half-molten pile of plastic lies on my plate. The fumes tingle my nose and wet my appetite. In the colourful mess I can vaguely recognize the outlines of Boba Fett, Han Solo and Darth Maul. But that is not all- there is some superfluous blue plastic-
I poke into the meal with my fork. Grand Admiral Thrawn? No. For a moment I suspect Max Rebo, but then- Oh! I heartily laugh as I realize there’s too little plastic for it to be Max Rebo if they were all similarly scaled figurines- It has to be Neel the Myykian instead. Contrary to popular belief he is not actually the same species as Max Rebo, who is an Ortholan. I dig into my meal with glee. The plastic is warm enough to be easily chewed, sticking delightfully to the palate and gumming up my teeth but not so hot as to burn me.
“I have to go,” my business associate says. I barely pay the man any attention but half-heartedly wave him goodbye. My attention is on my meal. When I am done I stagger out of the Dragon Lounge, only to be immediately accosted by the next bunch of morons adamant to bother me.
“Ministry of Mysterious Business,” the first of the men in black announces while pushing a badge in my face. Three more identical guys with drawn firearms surround me. “We have permission to open fire the moment a word about Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or a similar media property leaves your mouth,” he smugly informs me with trembling breath.
“Oh,” I say, as I stumble backwards. “You’ve got the wrong guy.”
“The watergraaf wants to talk to you. In the car, now.”
The count? What would the count possibly want with me, I wonder as I’m dragged into a van by painfully boring men, who nonetheless might have a basic understanding of the pop culture trivia that shapes their society and thus do not truly deserve to die.
[Chapter Break]
Nehalennia van Sloten
I’m perched on the roof of a six floor social housing unit. From a distance it vaguely resembles a castle, with the edges of the building slightly protruding to create an illusion of ‘towers-’ the social democrat government that built them called them “castles for the working class.” Right next to the building is another one. In between them is a small alleyway, an emptiness. A void. In this void now dwells the one I’ve been stalking.
She wears a wide-brimmed hat. Moons and stars adorn the pointed top. Little trinkets dangle from the brim. I don’t bother to try and understand why some witches feel the need to go out dressed like this. It probably makes sense if you’re a witch, which I am glad that I am not. Here to meet her is a younger girl, anxiously pacing around the alley. The witch produces a small bottle from a bag slung across her shoulder, and gives it to the girl. If she drinks it, she will wake up as a doll tomorrow. Tragically, I cannot intervene. It’s not just to punish someone for a crime not yet committed.
The girl hesitates. The witch eggs her on. The girl uncorks the glass bottle, and drinks the potion. Tomorrow she will wake up with skin made porcelain and eyes made glass. She will never be a human being again. The world will treat her as an object until she inevitably breaks. I smile. Doing such a thing to another human being- I cannot forgive that.
Both of them look around in confusion as I drop six floors down and hit the ground with catlike grace.
“Huh?” The girl asks. “Hmmm?” The witch mutters inquisitively.
“You who have stolen this girl’s life,” I announce while striking a dramatic pose. “Such evil I cannot forgive! In the name of the moon, I will punish you!”
“What are you wearing?” The witch asks. “Aren’t you a little young to be playing superhero?”
“Do not mistake me, vile magician, for those masked vigilantes running around to make citizen arrests. Do not confuse me, horrid witch, for the police dogs who hunt Nightmare Demons.”
The witch laughs. The trinkets dangling from her hat jig around as she shakes her head. “What then, pray tell, do you call yourself?”
“I see myself more as a serial killer with a strong sense of morality,” I reply as I draw my pocket knife.
The witch is not so slow in the head as to entertain me while I have my knife already drawn. She immediately starts running away. The poor unfortunate soul she just poisoned with her doll-draught screams in terror as I give chase, swishing my knife through the air in hot anticipation of cutting into soft, sinful and all-too-human meat. Colourful threads form around the witch as she dashes through the alley, and butterflies escape from under her hat. Each carrying a thread, they flutter around me in an attempt to tie me up. It’s fine with me. The more magic she uses, the easier it is to sense her emotional state. The Crystal Court of the Moontouched is called the ‘weakest,’ rarely displaying any serious paraphysical affinity and only bestowed with a talent for paranatural empathy. Sensing another’s emotions, sensing another’s feelings- feeling the feelings of another. This witch is feeling confident. I ruffle through her mind as the butterflies tie me up in colourful lint. Slight traces of guilt, a hint of anxiety. Confidence is the only sizable emotion I can grab onto right now. It’s not my favourite. It’s smooth but brittle, making for a bad surface for my locks. Nonetheless, it’s what I’ll have to work with today. I close my eyes and focus for a second on nothing but the sensation of the gate falling shut, of chains rattling around the neck, of the sickening sound of manacles clasping fast with no guarantee of release. I open my eyes as butterflies, circle around my arms, circle around my waist, yank me around and tie me to a drain pipe. As I gasp for air, my lock falls shut around the witch’s confidence. It’s not easy, attaching a chain to such an ephemeral thing as one’s confidence. I’m almost certain I am the only person in the whole of the land who can do such a thing. From my lock sprouts a chain, and the witch yelps in pain as metal rattles forth from her head. She screams and trashes, and for a second she no longer believes herself capable of tying me to a drain pipe with her will alone. Her butterflies dissipate, and I run towards her again. Now surfaces I can truly work with form in her soul. More chains sprout from her body, attached firmly to her sense of fear, to her confusion. I grab and yank at the chains as they drag across the ground, making her fall on her back, cracking her head on the concrete. Blood pools on the dirty pavement. “Help,” she screams. “Help me,” she cries. I point at another drain pipe, and a chain bursts from her heart to wrap itself around it. She takes a breath, and tries to clear her mind. As her fear leaves her body, even if for a moment, the chain contracts and drags her across the ground. She screams again, and the chain lets up. “Stop!” She screams. “Please!”
I walk over to her, and sit down on her chest. “Hello,” I say, and I try to suppress a smile.
“Please,” she begs. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because you’re guilty,” I say. “And that makes this justice. Delivering justice, in turn, makes me a good person. And that’s all I really want. To be a good person.”
I stick my pocket knife into her throat, and start to twist it around. She screams, but half the air coming from her lungs gushes out of her throat along with spurts of blood.
“Don’t worry,” I add. “I don’t really believe that. I’m not actually delusional.” She doesn’t answer me.
I twist the knife some more, and to my profound disappointment she dies on the spot. “Ugh,” I spit. “Lame.”
I get up, pat down my skirt and exchange my knife for a little mirror. I admire the bloodstains on my skirt and shirt, and hop scotch over to the crying, wailing girl.
“She loved me,” she screams at me. “She was going to care for me forever.”
“Loved, yes. Past tense.” I'm doing my utmost best to suppress a fit of laughter. “Don’t kid yourself. She was a witch. That’s a cluster B personality disorder, for your information. Do you know what cluster B is? Innately evil people.”
“What?” The girl asks, confused.
“You’ve thrown your life as a human away for nothing. Let this be a lesson,” I say as I skip away, content with another job well done. Behind me, the girl gives in to uncontrolled wailing and sobbing. When almost back at the start of the alleyway, I climb up the stairway of a fire exit, back to the roof. I’ll hide my clothes near my parent’s backyard, I think, then sneak back into my bedroom. Before these plans can come to fruition, though, I’m surprised by a group of strangers waiting for me on the roof.
“You there,” a man in a black suit wearing a black tie and black sunglasses says as he draws a gun. “Are you Nehalennia van Sloten?”
“And what if I am?” I ask, eyeing the alleyway behind me and wondering if I can jump down the ledge again before the man can shoot me.
“We’re with the Ministry for Mysterious Business. The Count wants to talk to you.”
“Euueeh?” I ask. “What for?”
“We’re putting together a team,” the man in black says as a helicopter roars overhead.
[CHAPTER BREAK]
Marieken Mithras
I’m standing on top of a rock on one leg, and Ruby-Lynn is throwing cans of beer at me. I’m not allowed to move. I’m not allowed to strike at cans that weren’t going to hit me anyway. The cans that would hit me- those I have to bat out of the way with shadow-limbs I sprout and immediately re-absorb.
“Why do you burn out if you spend too much magic?” Ruby-Lynn asks as she winds up a pitcher’s throw and sends another can of beer flying towards my face at around a hundred kilometers per hour. My shadow responds almost on instinct after having done this for two days in a row, but I have to rein it in. I can’t go ‘Cthulhu’ on a single can of beer, especially not standing right under the afternoon sun. With gargantuan effort I manage to limit my lashing out at the projectile to a single tentacle, and then with equal effort I manage to absorb the shadow-limb again before it goes through my store of magic like Robin goes through meth.
“As Moontouched I’m only semi-real. My soul would flare up akin to an allergic reaction when exposed to the raw reality-stuff of the world around us. If I run out of the magic it is cloaked in, it blows up like the face of a teenager allergic to chocolate.”
“Wrong.” Ruby-Lynn pitches a fast-can straight past my face. At the last moment I manage to avoid flinching. “In your case your soul will explode like a nuclear bomb. Full marks on the rest.”
“You’re so mean,” I say as I bat a can that would’ve, on second consideration, neatly sailed over my head.
“Don’t waste magic blocking attacks that wouldn’t hit you anyway!” Ruby-Lynn yells.
“I’m sorry,” I yelp as she winds up the next throw.
“How do Crystal Court Moontouched replenish their stock of magic?”
“Stargazing?" A can of beer just barely misses my right leg, the one I’m currently balancing on. “No wait. Taking in the emotions of others. Stargazing is Star Court, obviously.”
“B minus,” Ruby-Lynn throws a can directly at my face. I bat it away with enough force to blow it up, showering me in beer. I blink, and miss a precious second- another can hits me in the stomach, hard enough that I only realize I’ve hit my head on the pavement after I realize that I’m choking on a nasty mixture of blood and vomit.
“Cancer!” I scream as I dissolve the injured part of my body and re-manifest it from scratch.
“Christ,” Ruby-Lynn looks down on me from above. “That looks disgusting. You really are immortal, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say as I take her hand. She helps me back up on my feet.
“Unless you run out of magic. Why is why-”
“Yes yes, which is why you’re teaching me to conserve as much magic as I can.”
“It’s your literal only weak point, hacks notwithstanding,” Ruby-Lynn says.
“Excuse me?” I ask her. This is the first time she brought up the term.
“Hm?” She murmurs. “Oh. Some powerful Witches- and other Periphery Demographics with powers obviously- can manifest powers that attack you in less-than-obvious ways, with no clear method of defense against them. People call them hacks, because they’re seen as a bit like cheating.”
“Huh?” I ask. “Like what?”
“Hmmmmm. There’s a vampiress on the south end of town who can turn your negative emotions into slime. The more toxic the emotion, the more acidic the slime. The worse you feel, the more slime oozes out of you. Of course, freaking out because you’re oozing slime only makes more slime appear. People with jealousy issues, hate in their hearts or crippling depression are basically dead meat the second she wants them gone.”
“What!? That’s ridiculous,” I yelp.
“Yeah, hence the term ‘hacks’. But such powers are one-trick ponies, and on top of that they’re very rare. You have to be completely messed up in the head to develop them in the first place.”
“Right,” I say. “Because magic is all about believing. I’d have to truly believe that toxic emotions are like acidic slime, and then on top of that I’d have to truly believe that someone deserves to drown in their own slimeified emotions. I don’t think I could ever impose that vision on the world.”
“The only minds that can impose such a vision on the world are one-track minds.” Ruby-Lynn gestures towards the rock I was previously balancing on. “Go on. Balance on your left leg this time. Training isn’t over.”
“AUUErgh,” I grumble as I follow her instructions. She paces back to her pile of beer cans, and sends one straight at my knee. I bat it out of the way just in time.
“Liminal paths,” Ruby-Lynn says as she winds up the next pitch.
I remember this one from Walking In Moonlight, the book my dad got me when I first turned.
God, it can’t be that long ago. Why does it feel so long ago? “Paths through in-between spaces. They’re opened by Nightmare Erosion. You can’t wander into them unless you can see them, and if you can then you should best avoid them.”
“Why?”
“They’re one way streets, and getting lost in one of the thousands of demi-real branches of reality is a good way to die, or worse.”
“Good,” Ruby-Lynn fakes out a throw and then attacks my mind with a psychic spike instead.
I yelp, I flinch, and I fall down, failing to cloak my thoughts in shadow long enough. Ruby-Lynn’s mental probe cuts through my mind like a chainsaw, giving me the migraine of a lifetime and causing blood to spurt from my nose. “Stop,” I cry, stumbling around on all fours.
“Make me,” Ruby-Lynn says.
I growl, but before I can take on a shape better suited to ripping this indignant piece of lean, lesbian meat into shreds-
“What the fuck, Marieken,” she laughs as she intensifies her attack. “Lean lesbian meat?”
“That’s my dark side,” I cry out in pain. “That wasn’t me- ARGH- please stop!”
She doesn’t stop. I can barely breathe. My entire life is pain. I have no more mind. I only have a migraine now. Where my brain used to be is a big, black orb of suffering. I’m Marieken Migrainas, and I’m fairly confident I am in hell. Shadows, I mutter halfheartedly under a hurricane of psychic violence. Cool, dark shadows. Cold cold cold blanky. Blanky around the brain. Shadows. I fail to manifest my psychic defenses, and I screech like a dying seal. Finally, Ruby-Lynn lets up her assault.
“Aaaauuuuuwwaaaa,” I cry, laying flat on my stomach on the pavement.
“You okay?” Ruby-Lynn asks me as she squats down next to me.
“Okay-ish,” I mutter. “That hurt.”
“Yeah,” she says. “But you were a second away from actually murdering me. Try not to go full Yog-Sothot on me when we’re practicing a specific thing, okay? You wanted to learn to shield your mind from psychic intrusion.”
I think about Kate. My vampire roommate, who is still waiting for me in our little apartment and who has called me six times the last two days. I’ve sent her a text message that I’m okay and will be back, but at some point I am going to have to face her. Last she heard of me I was going out for noodles with a friend, and then I vanished for days. If she can read my mind when I get back, she’ll never want to see me again. Worse, she might run out into the sun in terror, popping like a maize kernel in the microwave.
“Try again,” I say, pre-emptively visualizing thick, dark clouds of liquid shadow obscuring my mind and soul from any hypothetical psychics. Ruby-Lynn shrugs, and I feel her mental probe plow through the shadows. I empty my mind, and push the clouds to the background. I feel her rummaging around in there, but she can’t find me. The only problem is keeping this up for longer than an hour.
“Marieken. This is something you can do against psychic attacks, but a natural mind reader tunes into your thoughts twenty-five hours a day. On top of that I think you should just be honest with your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I object, thinking about the pastel pink bedroom where Kate first drank my blood. God. Will I be bold enough to ask her to go for my neck instead of my wrist next time? “Still... It might buy me time to talk to her before she has to peep the horrors infesting my mind.”
Ruby-Lynn starts laughing. “Before she- god. Before she does what?”
“That’s from- that’s- that’s from a tv show don’t make fun of me. Everyone my age says it.”
“Peep the horrors? Everyone your age says that?”
“Yes,” I pout. I hate it when older people make fun of me, as if their own generation doesn’t say plenty of stupid shit.
“Enough training for today,” Ruby-Lynn says as she scoops me up from the pavement. She’s deceptively strong for her frame. She puts me down on my feet, and starts walking off.
“Where are we going?”
“Robin’s place, so you can get cleaned up, eat something and then hop on the bus home. Your roommates must be worried sick about you.”
“I can just-” I begin, but Ruby-Lynn interrupts me.
“No. You’re going to eat, and you’re going to shower. If you stop doing things like that you’re going to go down a very, very dark path, very fast. You can’t lose touch with being a human being, a person, not even if you’re as powerful as you are.”
“That seems a little exaggerated,” I say as I follow her back towards the harbor, towards Robin’s house.
“Marieken, you’re already talking about your ‘dark side’. You’re already giving in to the delusion that the world is some illusion you can do to whatever you want. What do you think will happen if you give in to these thoughts fully? If you let go of your routine entirely, you’ll end up as a Nightmare Demon before the year is through.”
“I’m pretty sure that that’s not how that works.”
“Trust me. It is.”
I shrug. She’s in front of me, so she can’t see. When we arrive at Robin’s house, only Mercy and Lily are actually there. Robin is still in the hospital, so Ruby-Lynn is taking care of them.
“Hya,” Lily greets me as I walk in. “How did training go?”
“Very well,” I say.
“She has a lot to learn,” Ruby-Lynn says.
“Look, I cleaned the entire living room,” Lily says.
“Oh, you did!” The Moontouched Witch beams. “Where’s Mercy?”
“Outside, with a boyfriend,” Lily answers. She’s obviously lying and she’s obviously trying to play all cutesy and innocent. With every passing day I am starting to loathe these two fuckpuppets more. Hate. It’s a new feeling. I don’t think I’ve truly hated before, in my sixteen year long run as a human girl. I wonder why Lily and Mercy offend me so much, why they seem so despicable to me. Maybe it’s my Moontouched narcissism at the root of this new venom. I wonder, I wonder.
“Outside with a boyfriend, or bisected and in the trash bin outside?” Ruby-Lynn asks.
“Trash bin,” Lily sighs.
“Guess who is sleeping in the basement tonight?”
“Mercy?” Lily hopefully tries.
“No. In fact, I think Mercy will be sleeping in bed with a hot Moontouched witch to hold her tonight, to try and cheer her up after her sister dumped her in a trash bin again.” Ruby-Lynn's tone of voice is playful, as if this is some extended bit they’ve been doing for years. They have, I realize. It’s all part of the sick dynamic she uses to keep these violent porcelain sex dolls with clay for brains in check. I wonder if Ruby-Lynn might be a bad person, but then I remember my distaste for the dolls and wonder if maybe this is fine, actually. That this might be just. Yes, I have decided. The punishment for being an annoying puppet without a spine is being trapped in a manipulative relationship where you’re treated as property for the rest of your life.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I wonder what’s happening to me, but the feeling is uncomfortable so I drown it in shadow.
Ruby-Lynn hurries me up the stairs, and shows me the shower. I dispel my clothes- they’re manifested matter, like the rest of my body- and hop into the shower. I turn the temperature up as hot as it can go, and with my eyes closed I start humming, determined to ace this ‘keep being a human being’ thing.
[CHAPTER BREAK]
I’m not entirely sure what’s happening. I’m groggy from waking up. No, that’s wrong, I realize. I’m groggy because I’m still asleep. I try to rub the sleep out of my eyes with my right hand. I can’t use my left, because it’s still around the throat of Theresa, one of the Moontouched twins from my high school.
“Sareth, please,” she whimpers. Clearly I’m not choking her hard enough if she’s still capable of speech, so I push her hard into the wall and start squeezing. Her cries turn into a gurgling half-cough that has trouble escaping her crushed-shut windpipe.
“Sareth, stop,” I hear a girl cry behind me. I turn my head around and recognize Maria, who is laying in a pool of her own blood. It sparkles a little in the evening light, and I wonder if all Mirror Court their blood sparkles like that. “Sareth!” She screams. “You’re going to kill her. Stop, please!”
“Sareth?” I ask her, confused. Very slowly it dawns on me that I’m not dreaming, and that my last memory isn’t of going to bed but of stepping under the shower. “What is going on here?” I ask, all confused.
“Sareth?” Maria echoes.
Theresa might actually die if I choke her like this, I realize at the same time that I realize that I have no reason to be attacking these two in the first place. I quickly let go and start apologizing.
“I’m so sorry. I have no idea what’s going on. Where the hell am I?”
“You bitch,” Theresa mutters hoarsely, clutching her throat. It’s bruised black and blue from the force I used.
“Marieken?” Maria carefully tries, crawling away from me, leaving a streak of blood on the pavement. Where am I, I wonder again. Looking around I seem to be in a courtyard of sorts, high rise buildings surrounding it on all sides. Abandoned high rises, I correct myself. Some kind of decrepit slated-for-demolition neighborhood.
“Yeah,” I answer her absent-mindedly.
“Please let us go. We’re sorry. We’re sorry for what Sareth tried to do to you. We’re sorry for bullying you. Please, please, please let us go. We’ve learned our lesson. There’s no need to mess with us like this, please stop.”
She’s crying, I realize. Tears streaming down her face. She’s injured, too. Blood gushes from her legs, broken and contorted into angles that legs should never bend in.
“Hey,” I say, my mind still groggy. “I didn’t, like, do this, right?”
“Why do you continue messing with us like this? We’re beaten and bloodied. Please just stop,” Maria cries.
“I’m not messing with you. I- the last thing I remember was stepping under the shower. Oh god, oh god oh fuck.’
Sareth. Sareth, who I talked to in the depths of my subconsciousness when Ruby had knocked me out. Sareth, who might have somehow taken control while I tried to de-stress for the first time in a week.
“Oh my god,” I mutter again. “Typhus.”
“Marieken?” Theresa gasps, still clutching her throat.
“Are you two going to be okay without medical intervention?” I ask, immediately realizing it as a stupid question. “Nevermind. Wait. I don’t want to use my own phone. Give me your phone, I’ll call the emergency number.”
“What the fuck is going on,” Maria cries behind me.
“I can call the emergency number myself, bitch,” Theresa says, fishing a flip phone from her pocket. Christ. Her throat looks bad. I wonder why it doesn’t really feel like I did that. Probably because I didn’t- it must’ve been Sareth, right?
“I euh, I have to go. I have to, euh, return some books to the library,” I stammer as I stumble backwards. Stumbling turns into an awkward sort of running, before I turn around and leave the courtyard full-speed.
Where am I? It takes me a while to shake off the daze, and then almost an hour of aimlessly wandering around before I recognize my surroundings. Amsterdam North. Past the river. I see. At least it’s easy going home, especially with the sun setting. Shadows aplenty. I dash from shadow to shadow, from shade to shade. I am the streak of dark touching from the light pole to the wall, from the rooftop to the trees and from the tree to the alleyway. I am as fast as thought, and in no time at all I stand in front of Robin’s house again.
Aren’t there things I should be thinking about? God. The last hour feels like a dream, like a nightmare. I’m almost scared to knock on the door. What if I am still asleep? I ponder what to do for a moment, then decide it’s best to go back inside. I don’t get the chance to knock on the door. Ruby-Lynn comes charging out, a mix of anger and worry on her face.
“Marieken Mithras,” she yells. “Where in all hells have you been?”
She almost sounds like my mom. A chill goes up my back. My mom. My fake mom. My mom who isn’t my biological mom at all, and who threw me out the second it turned out I had a quirky eye colour and two shadows.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m not sure myself.”
“What?” Ruby-Lynn asks, indignated.
“I stepped under the shower and-”
“Why are you covered in blood? Jesus, Marieken. You haven’t killed anyone again, have you?”
Worry, anger, righteous parental anger, they all make way for a single overwhelming emotion expressed on Ruby-Lynn Schulze’s face. Fear.
“No!” I yell. “I didnt. I got into a fight with-”
My mind spins. My mind clicks and whirrs, and against my nature, I decide to lie.
“I got into a fight with two Moontouched who used to work for Sareth, the witch that previously tried to kill me. I’ve beaten them up pretty badly but they’re alive. They’ll be fine. They’ve learned their lesson, I hope.”
The strongest lies contain a hardwood core of truth, after all.
“Jesus Christ,” Ruby-Lynn curses. “Come inside. God, what a nightmare you can be.”
“I’m sorry,” I stammer, following her inside.
“Why did you vanish? What happened?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “I closed my eyes under the shower, and then I was in Amsterdam North, across the river.”
“Teleportation?” Ruby-Lynn wonders aloud.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “I think I blacked out for a bit, because some time had passed when I came to.”
“That’s- That’s extremely worrisome, Marieken.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat.
“You’re strong enough that you could kill someone entirely by accident. Blacking out might be dangerous for everyone around you.”
“Hey,” I complain. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”
Ruby-Lynn stares at the bloodstains on my clothes.
“Well, they started it,” I mutter. I almost add ‘I think,’ but manage to swallow the words.
“God. At least discoroprate or disappearo those clothes and pull out a new set. When did you start dressing in all-black anyway?”
“I’m not sure,” I say as I try to let go of the magic keeping my clothes together. To my surprise, I find none. They’re real clothes. “They euh, they’re real clothes though. They’ll just have to go into the laundry,” I quickly spin.
“Where did you get them?” Ruby-Lynn asks, squinting.
“What? Oh euh, I’ve-” and I realize that if I lie right now, she’ll see right through me. “I don’t know,” I admit.
“You don’t know?”
“I must’ve gotten them while I was blacked out.”
“Jesus, Marieken.”
“It’s not that bad,” I try to say, but the uncomfortable nagging at the back of my mind is back. Might it be this bad? Might there maybe be something wrong with me? I reach for the comfort of the shadows, and drown the thoughts. I am in charge here. I’ll worry about what I want to worry about, and nothing else.
“Marieken, it is. I left you alone for a few minutes and you vanished, only to return covered in blood. This cannot happen.”
“It’s not my fault,” I mutter, annoyed. “It really isn’t.”
“Then whose is it, Marieken?”
I don’t like the way Ruby-Lynn is talking to me, but I do understand. I wish these things did not keep happening to me in ways where, to other people, it appears as if I am a violent maniac who keeps screwing things up. These things are happening to me! I didn’t choose this!
“Well?” Ruby-Lynn asks, squinting at me again, as if it were to sharpen her vision somehow, sharpen it enough to see what’s ailing me even without my explicit cooperation.
“I think I- I might be possessed? Or have a sort of, split personality?” I carefully try.
“Is this the ‘dark side’ you mentioned?” Ruby-Lynn asks.
“No,” I say. “This is different. The dark side, the dark side is me. It’s me even though I don’t like that it is. A shadow-me of sorts. But this isn’t me at all. This is another person who wants to dress in all black and picks fights with-”
Ever so slightly too late I realize my mistake.
“I thought you said they started the fight with you?”
“I mean, I-”
“Marieken,” Ruby-Lynn now yells at me, furious. “Stop lying to me. I’m trying to help you. I’ve been trying to help you for days now. There’s things you’re not telling me, there’s outright lies you spin. Tell me what the fuck is going on with you.”
I’ve devoured a girl’s soul, but it really wasn’t my fault. She started it. I’ve eaten a ninja boy's corpse. I’ve passed out and the soul I devoured probably puppeteered my body to break the legs of her previous flunkies for reasons that are beyond me. I’m not on blockers anymore and I’ve died and I’ve seen that the world is only a shadow-play on the wall. I know that I am not real, and that most likely, neither is Ruby-Lynn. I could kill everyone in Amsterdam with my paraphysical score and maybe I wouldn’t have to stop there at all. I could end all life on earth and even if I failed my soul would rip itself apart with the force of a nuclear explosion as a final defiance against the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun
I am Marieken Mithras, I’m seventeen years old and I’ve just discovered that I’m a changeling that the world is fake that the changeling outside my parents are arguing I keep having dreams where I have died or where I am someone else and outside the sun is setting the sun is setting the sun the sun the sun the sun the sun sinks under the horizon, and I start to laugh.
“Marieken?”
“I think I have to go on a walk,” I say, before I turn around and walk off.
“Marieken, if you walk away on me right now you do not have to come back here,” Ruby-Lynn screams at me. “You can come back and bother Robin, but I am not dealing with this.”
“Ok,” I yell at her. It’s fine. Throwing beer cans at me and making me recite simple platitudes about ‘magic’ wasn’t helping me anyway. Let Nozomi come and fight me. I don’t care. My life probably ended the moment Hiro drove his katana through my stomach. There’s things I want. There’s parents I want to yell at and ask why they didn’t want me. There’s a vampire girl in an apartment who is scared and worried about me and I would very much like to impress her, to make her my girlfriend, maybe. There’s a police officer who seems to know a thing or two where I don’t know anything at all, so maybe I’ll grill her for information. There’s so much to do for me and none of it has anything to do with hanging out with a much-older woman who emotionally abuses sapient sex dolls.
“Aaauurgh,” I scream at the sky as I let go of my body until it is a fine, dark mist drifting along the skies of Amsterdam. Try and stay human? Be a person? Take showers and go on walks? There’s no reason for me to do any of that. I never was a person. I thought I was, of course- I thought I was Marieken Mithras, sixteen or seventeen or whatever and I thought I was a human girl with loving human parents but I wasn’t!
I drift along the skies of Amsterdam, and I carefully feel out the shapes of the shadows underneath me. It’s easy to teleport around at night. The singular, gigantic shadow of the earth touches all the little shadows cast by little human lights, connecting all, and by barely expending any energy at all-
I manifest in Kate’s apartment, and cloak myself in a white-and-black gala dress adorned with upturned crosses, the kind Maria Mithras would wear on stage. Why would I not finally start dressing however I want? Why would I still adhere to pants and sweaters and not just be who I always was?
Walter looks up from his gameboy and raises a single eyebrow. “What did you do to your hair?” He asks, nonplussed. Finally someone reasonable.
“I got murdered by the friend I was going to see a few days ago. I had to reconstitute my body from scratch. I forgot my hair dye, my lenses and I guess I also forgot to fill my blood with fucking antipsychotics.”
“Oh,” Walter says. “I have to go run some errands with Kate in a bit. Do you think you can teleport or manifest or reconstitute yourself to the gas station and purchase some energy drinks for when I get back?”
“Huh? I, uh, sure?”
“That would be really great. Gotta finish this level then save my game, then I’ll head out. Thank you a lot, Marieken.”
I let go of my body, and snake through the streets of Amsterdam to the nearest twenty-four seven night store. The customers are startled when I appear out of thin air, but not so much to start screaming or yelling. Some of them take pictures of me with their phones. I wonder if I would’ve hated that, at some point. I vaguely think that would’ve scared me or made me sad, but I think I like the attention. Let them text images of the Moontouched girl who apparated out of thin air around. Spread the legend of Marieken Mithras, haha.
The line is long and I wait like a normal person, and I pay with normal money without explaining that it’s fake shadow money but that all money is and that it’s thus fine, and only when I have a bag full of random energy drinks and I reappear back in Kate’s apartment do I realize Walter has tricked me.
They’ve left the place in a hurry. Packed their stuff and ran.
I slump down in the middle of the room, and I start to cry. What now? Is there nothing left for me? I pick up random things and try to disassemble them, but I find that it takes a lot of magic to discorporate ‘real’ things, to convince them they’re only shadows in a magic lantern. I cry, and then I hear the sirens. I lay down flat on my back, and I wait for the Royal Marechaussee to kick in the door.
“Hands over your head,” three military policemen yell at me as they train their guns on me. I look up into their faces, into the barrels of their guns. A man in a black suit appears in my field of view, and he shows me a badge. Ministry of Mysterious Cases.
“Marieken Mithras?” He asks me.
“Yeah yeah,” I half-heartedly reply.
“We’ve reason to suspect you’ve been overcome with Nightmare Corruption. The firearms of these men are loaded with munitions that’ll unravel your magic. Come along peacefully and let us administrate medical care until we are certain you are not a danger to yourself and your surroundings, or we’ll be forced to open fire for our own safety.”
Nightmare Corruption?
Nightmare Corruption, the lexicon in my head chimes in.
“You don’t understand,” I say. “I’m not- I’ve had a really awful week. But I’m not a Nightmare Demon.”
“We’re not saying you are." He’s perfectly calm, but the cops with him are not. They’re sweating. They smell of fear. They know their guns will do nothing to turn them from prey into predator. I decide to tell them.
“Your guns will do nothing to turn you from prey into predator,” I helpfully explain. “You are human, and I am not.”
To my surprise, they open fire on me immediately. Ten or twelve bullets rip through my body before I can teleport away, and when I do I find my range limited and my body refusing to change. I howl in pain, leaning against the wall outside of the apartment, and realize their bullets really do dissolve magic.
Before I can properly gather my thoughts to think about what is happening, they rush out of the door and open fire on me again.
“Christ,” I scream as I stumble backwards. I fall down, and my body and soul both screech in agony. I hear a clattering noise behind me, and reach for it.
It’s Hiro’s katana.
Mistress! I hear in my head. You keep running away!
“Are you following me?” I ask out loud, confused.
“Drop the fucking sword!” The cops some meters away from me scream. “We will shoot to kill!”
Of course, the sword speaks aloud in my head. You’ve killed the imposter who had enslaved me, after all. I am yours to wield, oh beautiful daughter of Tsukuyomi.
“I don’t know who that is,” I admit. “Why can you talk?”
I used to be like you, spirit-man, demon-child, matter-soul and spirit-body, oni, youkai, demon, faery, nightmare-demon. A blacksmith trapped me in this blade to serve false masters.
“I’m not a Nightmare Demon or any of the other things you just mentioned, though. I’m a Moontouched.”
Child of the Moon! I did not know the words your culture uses to refer to the Children of the Moon. I apologize. You should feed me your blood and awaken my powers long sealed, then slaughter the samurai who foolishly train their weapons on you.
“Huh?”
The cops open fire on me again. I have no idea how many bullet wounds I have. It’s only my body, though it refuses to discorporate or heal. Poison spreads from my wounds, its deathly march slowed only by my own bloodloss.
“Hey,” I mutter. “You killed me before. Hiro stabbed you through my gut and I died,” I say.
Sorry, master. I am but a tool to be used, and if a false master wishes to wield me for evil I can do naught but suffer in silence.
“Right. I’m going to die again, and I’m not sure I can come back this time.”
Feed me blood! I will give you some of the power of the souls I have previously devoured.
“Ah,” I sigh, and I use the last of my strength to rip open my wrist on the blade. I can hardly comprehend what happens next. The sword bites into me, not into my body, but into me, and it leaves me a little lesser than what I was. In exchange, a dreadful stream of hate, pain and torment flows back into my veins. The sword is an actual Nightmare Demon, I realize. It’s eaten people, and it kept their minds and souls in a nightmare world, feeding on their agony and pain as it visited suffering on them of a magnitude difficult to imagine. I stand up, sword in hand, and realize a small part of me now lives in the nightmare world, a small part I will never get back. The cops shoot at me, but it is not magic that courses through my blood, and it is not shadows that bind my body and soul together.
I scream, and as I bring the sword down on the police, on the government agent, and on a dozen people I couldn’t be bothered to identify in the building stairwells as I flee, I find new purpose in violence. I can’t tell if I am awake or am asleep, but for the first time in a week I feel well and truly sharp- alive.
My name is Marieken Mithras, and a week ago I ate a girl's soul before being murdered by a boy with a katana myself.
My name is Marieken Mithras, and I have recently discovered that I’m a Nightmare Demon.