Chapter 36 - All Good Things...
-Back in the Present-
I had seen some pretty fucked up things in my life, but absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what was happening now and certainly not for what was about to happen.
"No…" Del rasped, before falling to her knees.
Risa was gone. I was having trouble wrapping my mind around that as the many voices in the hall started to stir from a murmuring wash of curious whispers to a cascade of gasping surprised exclamations.
She was gone. Getting to my feet and pulling my clothes back on, I looked around the hall. I quickly reached up to my neck and at least felt the reassuring weight of the proof that we had been joined. But…
Gone. Almost as an afterthought, my world quite literally dissolved around me. A thousand painful possibilities started running through my head. Maybe I'd never actually made it out of that darkness and this was just a horrible dream. Perhaps this was the death that was supposed to have been waiting for me after my leap into oblivion. I closed my eyes, almost wishing-
"Joe."
"What is it Del?"
"Open your eyes, this is far from over."
Slowly opening my eyes, I saw a completely different scene around me. The beautifully decorated and crowded hall had been replaced by a broken shell of a warehouse. No signs remained that anyone but Del and I had been here.
"What the fuck?" I said out loud, to no one in particular.
Illusion, I thought. This had to be Karisa's doing.
Helping Del to her feet, trying to ignore what I was seeing, I said plainly, "This must be Karisa's illusion."
Del's face twisted into one of pain as she reached up to touch my face, "No, Joe. This...is not the illusion."
Before I could even ponder on what any of this all meant, I heard a slight metallic ringing sound from the entrance to this burned out building. Looking over, I almost cried in relief as I saw Risa standing in the doorway.
Casually flipping a single gold coin and wearing a completely different set of clothing, she began to slowly walk towards us, "You sure about that, Delilah? Can you really be sure that this is reality?"
Her tone was almost completely unfamiliar as she spoke, and even the way she carried herself as she moved felt different than I had come to expect.
Even though I was staring at the face of my bride-Risa's face, I saw almost nothing of the girl I loved in those boundless green eyes beyond a simmering hatred. I didn't want to consider the possibility that this was-
"Karisa," Del said with certainty as she stepped in front of me, "What do you intend to do?" she continued as the bones of her fingers elongated until they split through the skin in a torrent of blood, shaping into a set of large claws.
"Me?" she said with a cruel laugh, "I liked that little 'wager' of yours so much that I made one with myself that neither of you would recognize me 'dressed' like this. Looks like I lost."
Finally catching the coin in her left hand, she held her arm outstretched to her left as another shape stepped out, impossibly, from behind her. I saw my Risa, looking physically identical to this otherwise unfamiliar person before me, still wearing her wedding clothes, reach over and take the small coin. The crushing feeling of betrayal started to overwhelm me like a creeping frost before I saw a look of absolute sadness on her face.
"What the fuck is going on here?!" I shouted, getting angry and not yet even entirely sure about what to be angry in the first place.
"Joe. I...told you that this was going to end horribly for you-that it was a mistake," Karisa said softly, betraying what sounded like a hint of remorse in her voice.
"But…" I stammered as I looked at the almost transparent clone.
"Oh, her?" Karisa asked with a nod in Risa's direction, "She's a fantasy. She doesn't matter. She never existed in the first place."
"You're lying," Del I managed in unison.
"She's just an apparition now. I warned her that there was more at stake than she realized. I told her that she wouldn't be able to handle it. She's just a piece of me anyway. If you don't believe me, ask me something only she could know."
Risa was just an illusion the whole time? That shouldn't be possible. Risa's illusions only seemed to work if she was nearby. Does that mean that Karisa had been following us the entire time? Was Karisa with Del watching over my sleeping body for a year?
The look on her face told me she wasn't lying, but then what was the point of all this? If she just wanted to ruin my life, why go to this much trouble? More to the point, there were at least a dozen other ways she could have much more easily accomplished it-she knew I trusted her completely. She knew-
"The 'lady' Karisa is leaving out some important details." Del said in a more confident tone.
"None of that matters, there was never the girl you knew as 'Risa', it's always been me."
"Interesting. Risa?" Del said in the direction of the apparition.
The 'shadow' looked up at Del in response, her eyes full of tears.
"As I suspected. That illusion is a self-aware persona. One has to wonder why the mighty Karisa cannot let that shadow rest."
"Fuck you, Delilah. I'm done being her."
"Truly?" she answered with a hint of real malice in her voice, "I believe this is the appropriate juncture at which I should mention that I had a chat with Mike the other day...or was it Gabriel?
"Don't say that name!" Karisa screamed as her form seemed to waver.
Ignoring Karisa's outburst, Del continued as she began to pace back and forth in front of me, "During our conversation, Gabriel told me about his beloved little daughter and how she had somehow developed an unhealthy attraction to him."
That was when things got weird-well...more weird, anyway. Karisa clutched her head and started screaming incoherently while reality itself bent and shifted around us, as if reality had been reduced to nothing more than a reflection in a rippling pool of quicksilver. Then, from behind her, three more figures stepped into being as Karisa fell to the ground.
"Oh shit. Uh...hey!" I heard Meryl's voice shout, as one of the figures waved to us.
Starting to feel confident that this had to be a dream, I answered her, "You seem surprised to be here…"
"Yeah, no kidding," the now-identified Meryl said as she brutally kicked the now-huddled form of Karisa, "Did you...uh…" she said as she looked around, "Ah, I get it. Looks like everyone gets to see little Karisa and her broken toys. If only she could have just been Risa from the start, right?"
"What are you talking about? I thought you wanted to help her!" I shouted.
"Not that it's any of your business now, but after what this filthy cunt has done-she needs to suffer," Meryl replied with a dark certainty.
I was quickly losing my already tenuous grasp of the situation. Weren't these just illusions? Karisa had to be controlling them, so...how or why would Meryl kick her like that? As I pondered that mystery, Yuki and Kaeli (or what I assumed had to be them, never having seen them with my own eyes) began to beat Karisa's huddled body mercilessly. Looking at the slightly faded phantom of Risa, she looked away and closed her eyes. It was as if this scene was something she couldn't-or didn't want to see.
"Karisa has almost completely subsumed Risa." Del exclaimed, staring intently at the scene in front of us.
"We like Risa better," said Yuki's small voice in response.
"You know what she did to us," Kaeli said, fixing her powerful stare on Karisa's huddled body.
I saw Karisa's form painfully react to the powerful impacts that seemed to be hitting her. This wasn't right...was it? Even with all she had done, did anyone deserve this? That was completely ignoring the fact that she was somehow doing this to herself. What Ixi told me was starting to make sense.
"Del…?" I began, still way beyond my depth.
"I apologize Joe...I cannot see a resolution to this. Karisa is a master of illusion on a level I'm having difficulty understanding. She killed her sisters and-"
"I've got it," I said, feeling pretty sure I had this mostly down.
"Not entirely," Del whispered, "Gabriel and Mike are also the same person-Karisa's adoptive father."
"Why should that even matter now?"
"For some reason, Karisa is no longer willing or able to hold her memories back-our Risa has become aware of what she's done, and what she is, and is...choosing not to exist."
"Damn it," I thought. That poor bastard, Mike. No wonder he was always crying. A girl that looked, and probably acted just like his daughter was bound and determined to rape him at every turn, not even knowing who he really was. Wouldn't that mean that Karisa had just been trying to stop it by keeping Risa away from him?
Well, I could certainly relate to a state of mind in which I didn't want to exist anymore, and even if I could put the brakes on this whole thing...where would that leave Risa? I'm sure I'd read something about this in a psychology book somewhere, but I was pretty sure that book didn't have a happy ending.
"Fuck it," I said to myself. I didn't know what the smart thing was to do here so I'd just have to wing it and go for the brazenly ignorant.
"Stay back Del-this is probably going to get really messy. I...have to try something so...just trust me."
"But I-understood," she answered as she backed up a step.
I got it now-or at least as much as I could, given the fucked-up scene playing out before my eyes. The center of nearly every one of our conflicts, from start to finish, was a direct result of what Karisa had done. Based on what I was seeing now, I was left wondering: Had Karisa really created a set of illusions so powerful that she'd been able to fool herself with them?
It isn't difficult to understand that everyone has problems, but not everyone has the power to bring their own inner demons to life to beat the shit out of them. Based on what I thought had to be the cause of all this, it seemed that, in some desperate attempt to reconcile the pain she felt she deserved with the happiness she still desired with all of her heart, Karisa's mind must have split into two distinct personalities, both existing within the same body. Or that's what I thought anyway.
I didn't like Karisa-not from the little I knew about her anyway, but nobody deserved this sort of punishment, least of all from within their own head. And I'd roll over and die before I broke the promise I'd made to help Karisa to the dying Ixi.
Walking closer to the scene, I reached out to the faded form of my Risa, seeing my hand pass right through her phantasmic body as I tried, in vain, to touch her. I couldn't hear her sobbing voice, but I motioned to turn her back around to look at what was happening.
"Can you hear me?" I asked her.
Her response was a simple nod.
"You need to see this, and...it seems like you're also going to hear a lot of things you don't want to hear, but…" I took a deep breath and sighed, "whatever happens, just trust me."
While I may not have liked Karisa, by the strictest definition, she was still Risa. I mean, really-"Risa" was just a shortened version of the name to begin with. I felt a little silly for not seeing it until now. I pressed the internal timer in my head and prayed that five minutes would be enough...
"Damn, I really hope this works," I thought to myself as I dove toward the storm of flailing limbs to shield Karisa from the assault.
"Move," Kaeli demanded as her fist connected with my jaw.
"This bitch needs to pay for what she did!" Meryl shouted as she sent a powerful kick towards my chest, causing me to double over.
"She killed us...she looked right in my eyes as she watched me die, even when I begged her to stop!" Yuki cried out as she stomped on my spine.
That hurt-badly. I didn't know how much damage I thought an illusion could do, and at this point, I simply didn't care. I just accepted the assault in Karisa's place, knowing that fulfilling my promise to Ixi was more important than any pain could otherwise convince me, and the only thing I could imagine that had a chance to save Risa. The rain of blows was relentless as the phantasms spit every type of bile and vileness their contrite creator could imagine.
If these were just illusions, then they were far more solid than I had hoped. As a particularly powerful kick connected with my side, I coughed up blood in reaction to the pain as I felt one of my ribs snap.
I wrapped my arms defensively around the huddled, shivering tanuki as I softly said to her, "Please stop."
That simple statement seemed to put the entire world on pause as she looked up at me in a mix of anger and sadness.
With her voice cold and remorseless, she said only, "Get away from me," as she easily threw me off of her and stood up.
"I don't want your pity, human. Just get the fuck away from me. I never want to see you again."
"Why are you doing this? What could you have-" I tried to ask before the three sisters cut me off.
Speaking in unison, they looked at the figure of Karisa and pointed accusatory fingers at her, saying, "Suffer. All Karisa is good for is to suffer. Karisa was a murderer before she could even crawl. She cannot be forgiven. She must always remember. Remember..."
"No no no! Not now!" Karisa screamed with an encroaching hysterical edge to her voice.
The entire building around us shifted back to one that looked almost identical to the fancy hall that had surrounded us before Risa had vanished. Looking around more carefully, I saw that even the guests appeared to be the same group of people.
The difference was in the group assembled around the altar. I saw Risa's sisters, an unfamiliar man, and a similarly unfamiliar fox woman.
At that moment, Karisa burst into the ceremony hall, nobody in the entire massive chamber even reacting to her entrance except for the man standing as the groom. She had obviously been crying, her hair matted and eyes still swollen even though the tears had since stopped.
Reaching into her small bag she pulled out a very familiar serrated kitchen knife and stalked right up to the altar, apparently cloaked in illusion, as the man was the only one that seemed to be able to see her.
Without a moment of hesitation, the instant she reached the tall inari she quickly drew the knife across the fox woman's throat, leaving a fan-shaped splatter of blood across the officiating priestess as the man's eyes went wide in horror. Showing no trace of emotion whatsoever, Karisa then methodically thrust the knife into the throats of Meryl and Kaeli, only stopping to watch silently as they struggled to breathe, drowning in their own blood.
Yuki seemed to snap out of the glamour to notice Karisa at that moment and cried out in shock as she bolted for the door. But exactly as Risa had pounced on me the one misguided time I had tried to run from her, Karisa landed with her feet on Yuki's shoulders and drove her into the ground. With nearly a hundred guests still seeing only the serene wedding scene, none of them even reacted to Yuki's screams of abject horror and pain as Karisa slowly and deliberately sawed through each of her Achilles tendons.
"I'm sorry Karisa! I'm sorry! Please...please don't!" Yuki cried out between blood-curdling screams of agony as Karisa turned her over and stared down into the eyes of the terrified girl.
"I'm a murderer, remember? Our mother and father are both dead because of me. You guys were right all along-this is all I can do."
"No no. We didn't mean it! Please Karisa-d-don't kill me!" Yuki tried to force through the tears and pain, "We're sis-"
Not allowing her to finish, Karisa drove the hilt of the knife down at Yuki's windpipe to silence her and then began wildly slashing at her face through the nearly muted screaming until Yuki's visage had become an unrecognizable mass of gore.
As the image faded out, I only barely suppressed the powerful urge to vomit, never having seen something so brutally violent in my entire life. I had no time to consider the ramifications of what I'd just seen as I saw the evanescing form of my Risa perk up in an apparent sudden realization as she stepped forward and closed her eyes, causing another grand illusion to fill the space of the entire warehouse.
Fading into being was a small, but well-appointed bedroom where Karisa sat on the bed next to the well-muscled young man from the ceremony, where they appeared to be conversing.
"You sure, Ris? You've been packing every gold piece you've ever earned into that kitty bank since you got it," the man said with a slightly concerned smile.
"I know, and it's a little sad to have to break it, but...I'll never be able to support a husband if I don't get my own business started," Karisa replied.
Giving Karisa a powerful hug, the man smiled as he ruffled the hair between her fuzzy ears, saying, "Well, look at you! All grown up, eh? With that kind of attitude you'll be able to catch any man you want. Don't you dare bring home some loser though, or I'll beat his ass. You deserve a whole lot better than some random portal-bitch!"
Blushing a bit as she pushed him away, Karisa replied, "You're embarrassing me!"
"Aww, little Ris is too big to be my snuggle bandit, now? Why, you already got your eye on someone special?"
In response, Karisa's blush only deepened as she looked away, unable to answer.
The illusion shifted slightly, remaining in the same room as the illusory Risa seemed to fade a bit more from view.
This time, Karisa was dressed in a bridesmaid gown, frantically searching through the room.
"Damn it, where is she?" Karisa said out loud as she continued to search.
"Looking for this?" Meryl asked from across the room as she held up the cat-shaped coin bank and shook it.
"Give her back, Meryl!" Karisa shouted angrily.
"You had it hidden next to a picture of Gabriel, you in love with him or something?"
Unable to hide her blush, Karisa just screamed, "Shut up!"
"Oh sweet Amarante, you ARE! Just how fucking stupid are you?"
"Damn it Meryl! Give her back!"
"He doesn't even know how to fuck! Just lays there like a dead fish."
"What are you-"
Interrupting her, Meryl added, "Yeah, Jory let us all have a turn-well, except you. She thought he might catch a disease or something from you. Actually…" she continued as a cruel smile spread across her face, "she asked me to tell you that it's probably better if you don't even come to the wedding."
"Anyway, take this stupid thing back," Meryl said as she raised her arm and then threw the glass coin bank at the hard stone floor. The cat-shaped bank shattered into dozens of pieces, sending glass shards and the gold coins that had been contained within flying to every corner of the room.
"Oooh, sorry. Damn thing slipped right out of my hand. Hey, at least it looks like you have enough to hit one of the cheap brothels-might as well pay now for the only taste of man you'll ever get-got to stay ahead of inflation, right?"
As the illusion started to phase from being, the Karisa in the image fell to her knees and began to wail in sadness. Several moments passed as her look slowly transformed to one of an all-consuming anger, her eyes taking on a feral quality as she crushed one of the pieces of glass in her hand.
"I can see it, mother." I finally heard my Risa say as the previous illusion passed into nothing, her voice sounding somewhat hollow and distant, "There is more…"
I could see that whatever power Risa was using to manifest these other illusions was draining the solidity from her form even more quickly. I had no idea what that was going to mean, feeling utterly helpless to do anything but stare at the scenes as they were presented.
The next image that manifested was of a cheap tavern, the city of Alnor just barely visible out the grimy windows. Meryl was conversing with a pair of cloaked figures.
"It's already handled, Ajora was dead the moment she tried on that dress. These old demon poisons are the best-it's supposed to take her like three days to die, and it takes five days to distill an antidote!"
"How are we getting paid?" one of the figures asked.
"We can't touch her share of the consortium, but I'll cash out Ajora's personal holdings and you guys will get half-should be close to two-hundred thousand gold."
"What about the husband?"
"Much as I'd love to keep a man around, he's a fucking horrible lay and this damn bureaucracy might just give him all of Ajora's holdings if I forget to grease the right palms. So, after Ajora falls 'ill', kill him, sell him in Kaori, whatever you want, I don't care as long as he's gone."
Only visible to us, Karisa sat, cloaked in shadows, in the corner of the filthy tavern as she observed the entire exchange, her teeth clenched in rage.
As the ruined warehouse came back into focus, Karisa shouted, "Stop, Risa! Please...just stop..."
Looking over at Risa, she was now difficult to even see as the edges of her form were steadily being devoured by the cold press of reality. I saw her ears perk up one final time, accompanied by a slight smile in my direction, before the last remnants of the illusion that had been my Risa faded completely, her voice cutting through the gloom one final time to utter, barely above a distant whisper, "My love…"
As Risa's fading form finally passed into memory, an inconceivably impressive illusion, encompassing everything around us, manifested. The broken interior of the warehouse had been completely replaced with a well-appointed manor, clearly the dwelling of an important person in some regard. Within this fine home, an image played of a very young Karisa being tormented by her sisters.
Meryl was the first to speak, "You happy, you worthless twat?" she said as she threw the young form of Karisa (who couldn't have been more than 5 years old) down a small flight of stairs to a landing.
"We're being adopted by Lady Ajora-mother's rival. It's your fault," Kaelie added as she leapt down to the landing and kicked the now-huddled little girl as she'd been trying to catch her breath, eliciting a small shriek of pain.
With an uncaring smile, Yuki added in her sweet voice, "Karisa...we all have to take responsibility for our actions. Just like you should take responsibility for father's suicide the moment he laid eyes upon the horrible little girl that had just murdered his wife."
As Meryl walked up to grab the little girl again, her hand passed through the illusion. "Displacement at your age? Not bad," Meryl said with a laugh as she launched a fierce kick into what looked like empty space, where it connected with Karisa's chest and sent her tumbling into a glass display case full of small family portraits.
Picking up one of the larger shards of glass, the sharp edges cutting into her hands deeply, Karisa stood, brandishing the piece of glass like a knife, swinging it in the air to try and keep her sisters away. They stopped their advance and stood around her in a semicircle, trapping her in a corner.
"Careful where you point that thing, sow. Someone might get hurt. But I guess you don't have to stop on our account," Meryl said, the scene shifting again to show that Karisa had been holding the glass shard poised against her own throat.
"Just get it over with," Kaeli said.
"She's right," Meryl added, "We'd still have a mother if you'd never been born."
"And don't you care about Ixi?" Yuki added with her false cheer, "She told us yesterday how much easier this would all be if you'd never been born. Can't you see how sad she's been? Convincing her lover to adopt us all-she can't even take care of us anymore because you eat so much."
Her desperate voice cutting into the illusion, Karisa seemed to plead, "Please no...I don't want to remember this!"
The image of the grand hall wavered before resolidifying to show the young Karisa starting cry as the red-scaled form of Ixi strode into the hall.
"Leave her alone, girls," the dragon intoned in her powerful voice.
"This little bitch started it! Stabbed me with a piece of glass!" Meryl said as she showed her arm to Ixi, now sporting an illusionary gash.
"I don't care who started it-I'm ending it. Either go outside or go to your room."
"Sorry Ixi," Yuki said in a saccharine tone, "we didn't think she'd break the glass. I'll clean everything up later."
With that, the sisters walked off as the powerful arms of the dragon reached down and picked up the small, sobbing girl. Gently stroking her hair, Ixi whispered, "Don't listen to anything they tell you, Karisa. Your mother loved you with all of her heart, even before you were born."
"W-why did she die, Ixi? Did I kill her?"
"No no no, sweetie. Your mother was very sick-she had been for years. The healers told her she shouldn't have another child but she got the Lord's blessing anyway-that's how badly she wanted to meet you."
"T-they said we have to move in with someone that hates us-Lady 'Jora"
"Not at all, she offered to adopt all four of you, I didn't even have to ask."
"Are you coming too, Ixi?"
"No...I-Jory has a...special person already so I'll continue to live here, but I'll come see you whenever you want, and I'll still be around as Lady Ajora's bodyguard."
A fresh round of tears starting to flow, Karisa wrapped her arms as tightly around Ixi as she could manage and cried out, "I want to stay with you, Ixi! Please don't make me go! I promise I can be a good girl…"
"You're already a perfect little girl. Don't worry sweetie," Ixi said as she affectionately tilted Karisa's chin to look her directly in the eye, "I'll never be too far away to hear you. If you ever need me, just say my name and I'll be there," the dragon said as she pulled Karisa close and nuzzled the young girl gently with her cheek.
"Okay. Then...then I'll be strong like you. I'll smile even when I'm sad because that's what Ixi would do."
"Oh sweetie, don't say that. I cry too sometimes, I just have to be extra strong to protect cute little girls like you."
"Why do you cry? Did you lose your mommy?"
"I lost my mommy a long long time ago, but that's not why. I cry because I can't be near someone else I love, but you don't need to worry about me."
"But...that's sad," Karisa said before making a small nod, "Then, c-can I maybe...can I call you mommy just once? I promise I won't say it again after..."
Now shocked into fighting unexpected stinging tears of her own, Ixi responded, "Why would you want to say something like that?"
"Um...Yuki said that I'm only allowed to love my mommy...and...that nobody but my mommy would ever love me so...I wanted to pretend so I wouldn't be sad. Um...and t-then you could be close to someone you love too," the young girl said as she wrung her hands bashfully, her eyes on her own feet.
"Sweetie," Ixi began as she seemed to be battling to keep her tears in check, "You can love...whoever you want. And before you know it, other people will love you too. I just-don't let anyone ever say otherwise. But...since I got you this going-away present-just this once...you can call me mommy."
Kneeling down to set the young danuki on the floor, staying on a knee to remain as close to eye level as her large form would allow, the dragon pulled a small, wrapped package from her bag and handed it to Karisa.
"Go ahead-open it."
Tearing open the plain wrapping, Karisa finally saw the gift-a small lucky cat coin bank.
"Ixi...it's so pretty! And she has her cute paw in the air!" Karisa giggled as she smiled back at the dragon. Her look then turned a bit more serious and she continued, "I love you, mommy," she said as she kissed Ixi on the cheek and tried to crawl back into her arms.
"I love you too, Karisa," the powerful woman managed to say even as her tears strained at her voice, the words coming out pinched, as she buried the tiny girl in her powerfully soft embrace.
At that, the remaining illusions all faded, leaving only Karisa, Del, and I in this broken husk of a warehouse.
"What...what was that?" I said out loud, again not even certain to whom I was addressing the question.
No longer huddled on the ground, but still on her knees, Karisa shouted out, "That was what you wanted wasn't it? The pain I see every single time I close my eyes? That's what 'she' couldn't handle!" she added, gesturing to the place in which the illusion of Risa had stood.
"So...what, you handle all the pain and she gets all the happiness?"
"Why do you care?! You said right to my face that you wanted to bury me. You killed the closest thing I ever had to a mother-the only person that ever loved me...and in the end you were just going to leave me too," she said as she hugged her own shoulders, slightly rocking on the floor through her tears.
"Karisa, I feel more guilt over that moment with Ixi than for anything else I've ever done. But Ixi...sacrificed herself for you-the only thing left to her that mattered. She begged me to save you! You forced her to watch as you slowly destroyed yourself."
"I took everything from her! She should have hated me...so I had to make her hate me..."
"Well, you failed. Her last thought was of you-her last request was that I take care of you."
"How?! How dare you-"
"Look! I know I'm selfish and arrogant-and it's not even like I have a right to be. I just wanted to be a protector-Risa's protector." I said as I gestured to same empty space.
"I told you, she is a fantasy-I...imagined her and she sprung to life on her own, living in my body."
"Why?"
"I...you're right, I failed-I deserve to suffer. I didn't want to, but every time I think about what I did…" she began again and was wracked with a shuddering, tear-filled scream as her illusory sisters materialized again to renew their assault.
"Stop!" I screamed as loud as I could muster as I saw the sisters take a step back.
"I can't...I didn't even try to make 'Risa'...she's just who I should have been-who I always wanted to be-a sweet pacifist with a family that loves her. She could be kind and passionate despite being brought into this world by a terrible monster, and with no memory of the horrible things she's done," Karisa choked out between overwhelming bouts of tears.
"If you want to live as her, then why don't you?!"
"Because I don't deserve it!" she screamed, "If she got too happy, I'd start to lose control and she'd start to...remember everything that happened. It would have been fine if she'd never found Gabriel- 'Mike'...or you."
"That's fucking bullshit!", I shouted at her, "You're allowed to smile, but never be happy? Allowed to cry, but never be sad? That isn't living! Have you considered that she-no, that YOU are allowed to be happy despite everything that happened?"
"I can't! Every time I tried to forget-to convince myself that she was real-that I was the fantasy, the memories would come back."
"You aren't meant to forget! You're supposed to learn from it and move on! Where's the girl that had to smack the will to live back into me when I was ready to give up on my own life?!"
"She never existed in the first place!"
I took a deep breath and continued. It felt like I was making some kind of progress-but this whole thing could come undone and vanish like a whisper into a storm if I wasn't careful.
Forcibly choking down sadness as I realized what I was saying, I asked, "If Risa is completely gone...hasn't she just returned as a part of you? Isn't it as though you've lived as her the whole time she's known me and Del? You've been 'yourself' less and less through this whole time until recently."
"That doesn't matter, that...isn't me."
I started realizing it the moment I started talking to her in earnest, but Karisa was, without a doubt, the woman I loved-or was quickly becoming her. It seemed that as my Risa had begun to fade, her feelings and memories had melded with, or added to, the core of Karisa's being. Hiding herself in this shell of self-hate, she was trying to push me away (again!). She was the reason I ended up in that dark hole in the first place as she tried to protect herself from potential future sadness. Thinking on it now, my own emotional pain from before I took the leap that brought me to this world seemed laughable in comparison to what Karisa had been through, but everyone has a breaking point.
I took a step towards her and she quickly got to her feet.
"Don't come near me!" she said as she pulled out the kitchen knife, still caked with Ixi's blood, and held the serrated edge to her own throat as she started to cry again.
"Stop!" I shouted out.
"I...I can't, Joe. I don't want this anymore. It's too much. I want to be with you more than anything else I've ever even wished for, but...I just can't. I know Del can make you happier than some broken girl that should never have been born. I love you, but...this is the only way for me to atone for-"
She was hurt and scared, and utterly convinced that she deserved all of this self-inflicted agony-so convinced that at some point she felt she needed to pretend to be someone else. At her core, however, she really did want to be the person I had been traveling with this whole time. The fantasy of Risa might be gone, but then-she was also standing right in front of me. With an inner smile I realized that if I hadn't snapped out of that senseless stupor on my first wedding day, feeling like a lifetime ago now, I'd have been married to Karisa long before we even got to this day.
I saw my chance and I took it. As she tried to blink away her tears, I charged toward her, leaping forward to grip the blade of the knife with both hands, making it impossible for the blade to reach her, letting out a violent hiss of pain as the steel edge cut deeply into my hands.
"What are you doing?!" she screamed as she tried to pull the blade out of my grip, her efforts stymied by the troublesome bones in my hand not quite yielding to her strength.
"I'm not letting you go! I told you that there is nowhere you can run to get away from me. I won't let you push me away again!"
I tried to focus only on her eyes, doing everything I could to will the nearly unbearable physical pain away as I continued, "I've already died three times, and you've been next to me each time I came back to life. I won't let you deny that that means something! I don't want to imagine trying to live in a world in which I'd never have the chance to wake up next to you ever again!"
She screamed with the heady mixture of her rage and sorrow as she unintentionally sawed at my hands in trying to get the knife free from my grip, causing me to howl at the almost unbearable pain. I tried to twist the knife out of her grip, only succeeding in driving the edge more deeply into my own flesh. As she tried to push me away with her free hand, it started to feel as though the blade was about to break through the bones in my left hand hand. Somehow I managed to use the knife as a lever and twisted Karisa's wrist enough to take the knife with me as she pushed me to the ground.
Feeling my vision going cloudy as my body threatened to pass out to escape the pain, I yelled loudly as I stood, gripping the knife in my right hand, and hurled the weapon with all of my strength toward one of the cracks in the roof, the blade miraculously passing out of the building entirely.
Everything that is or was Risa had already returned to become one with the girl standing before me. Whatever name she wanted to use didn't matter. I could only hope that Risa's feelings would be enough to convince Karisa's battered heart to keep on living. Right as she had lost the grip on the knife, she fell back a step and tried to cover her face.
"Come on. Don't you want to be with me-with Del?" I asked as I ventured a glance at my badly bleeding hands.
"You don't even know me! You're just a stupid human with stupid ideas."
"I know you-I know who you've been trying to be all this time-how you wish you could see yourself. You said as much on your own."
"You don't know ANYTHING!" she screamed, almost shaking the walls, as her veneer began to crack further.
I moved to put myself directly in front of her and looked at her hopefully, saying, "Then...why don't you tell me? Tell me what else is so bad about you. I already know about your past and I'm still standing here. What else is there to know? I'd spend the rest of my life just learning the answer to that question if I had to."
Finally pushed beyond her breaking point, she hit me...hard. As her fist connected with the side of my face, it sent me reeling onto my back. Despite the pain, I rolled about for a moment before I forced myself back to my feet and stepped towards her again. She was still trying to run away-to convince me to run away.
Almost regretting the likely outcome I quipped, "Going to take a lot more than that to get me to leave my wife-you'll have to kill me first. I already told you but...I love you.
I knew she was going to hit me again, but I had an inkling of what to do. As she reeled back to unleash her right fist at me again, I took a quick step forward, forcing her wild punch to land (still painfully) on my shoulder.
"I'm not your wife, dumbass! You don't love me; you love a fantasy! How many times do I have to tell you-"
I sighed inwardly at how stubborn this girl was. Was she really going to pretend that she hadn't already tried to marry me before by her own volition? As I looked at her, something caught my eye that convinced me that I didn't need any further verification that this was my Risa in the ways that truly mattered. Placing a quick kiss on her forehead, knocking her off balance, I quickly reached up to her neck and laid my bloody fingers upon her necklace-the one I had snapped onto her myself.
"Then why are you still wearing my necklace?"
"No...it's-I just-" she stuttered as she tried to look away.
"I get it. You've done some really bad things-things that can't be fixed or undone. Why should you have to spend the rest of eternity paying for them? You can be who you want to be, though if it's a beautiful sad girl that deserves nothing but pain, then you'll have to try that over my dead fucking body. Why not just be the girl I love-my wife? All you have to do is make the choice and you can be her-No, you already are her, and you've always been her."
"It would all be a lie, I'm not that girl." she said, now focused on me.
"You are more than just the girl I fell in love with. I told you I'm really not a one-woman sort of guy. Isn't this like adding another gorgeous girl to my harem?" I said as I pulled her into a hug, unintentionally smearing the blood from my badly bleeding hands all over her clothing as I added, "Seriously though, you've been trying to convince me, Del, and even yourself this whole time to hate you-Why am I still here?"
She was hesitating in her struggle. She could have easily thrown me off of her.
"You'd stay with any girl that flipped her tail at you…"
"You're the only girl who's ever flipped her tail at me."
I shook in overwhelming relief as I tried to breathe, realizing I'd been holding my breath for some time. I then pulled her into my embrace as tightly as I could manage, not willing to let her go. There would be a lifetime to sort out the fresh hell Karisa had tried to make for herself just over the last few months, but for now I wanted-needed her to just be happy. Ignoring the throbbing fist-sized pain in my face that was still threatening my knees with weakness, and the utterly excruciating pain in my hands as I forced them to hold her tight, I felt her slender body finally allow itself to relax a bit.
"Karisa, right?" I asked softly, "We got off on the wrong foot. My name is Joseph, but I'd like you to call me Joe, okay?"
Not even forming a response through the body-wracking sobs of anguish that seemed to come over her in waves as each painful memory bubbled back to the surface, she wrapped her shivering tail around me and held tightly-maybe still worried that I'd run away.
"Mind if I call you Risa for short? I was torn between that and Special K," I said, trying to be humorous-as much to keep myself strong as for her benefit.
"Okay," she quietly replied in the momentary valley between the peaks of her dysphoric agony.
Taking a drawn-out intake of breath to breathe in her familiar intoxicating scent, I felt the rush of adrenaline leave me as my own limbs started to shake. With my new wife clinging to me tightly, I began to vacillate slightly on my feet as the weakness threatened to pull me to the ground. Without warning, I felt hands pressing into my back, holding me up. I turned to see Del smiling as she dried her own tears.
I was really going to need to sit down soon.