"Everywhere I go I see your face
And every sound I hear is the sound of your voice
Why are you haunting me?
Why are you haunting me?
Why can't I let you go?"
--Stabbing Westward
"For When You Return"
Part VIII
Location: The Time of the Sixth World
Two Eternities Before Present Day
It had been centuries since the child called Kai had been felled to her certain doom by the
arrows of the same men who had at one time put food on her plate. However, these later times
were not that different then they were before. Scholars spoke of an age of advancement, when
technology was at its peak, yes... but they had also spoken of war, a war so harsh and so long
that it had eradicated everything that they had built, so that life had to start anew. People
lived as they did in the past, and machinery was at a low. It seemed, many people thought
bitterly, that technology only rose in terms of weaponry.
And they still feared magic.
They hated it, in fact.
The man called Barrus Myre had seen a number of witches slain in his lifetime, and he could not
say that he felt any empathy for them. His hatred was kept strong by his fear, fed by stories
that he had heard since childhood -- magic was evil, and once a person had been touched by it...
He was lost. Everything that came in contact with him was lost.
Barrus had always considered himself to be a good man and a fair man when it came to the bare
bones of life. He loved his wife, he loved his parents, and he loved the village in which he
lived with a great passion. He would have died for it, and everything that he did was only for
the purpose of helping those that he felt strongly for.
...He wasn't evil.
Was he?
But the voice in his head told him something entirely different.
It had just -been- there one day. He had been feeling achy and listless since that morning, and
the feeling hadn't improved into the afternoon. It was then, while he was chopping a load of
firewood, when he first heard it. He had nearly cut his foot off in his surprise. Whirring
about, he cast his face around the clearing where he stood, but there was nothing there.
Nothing.
A songbird had trilled. Teasingly.
That had been a month ago. He had tried to hide it. At first, it was easier. The voice was
nothing more than a whisper, something that came to him unexpected and quietly, like a hush.
Now, however, as time began to wear on him this plague took it's toll, too. The words in his
head got stronger, came more frequently, and at night he whispered statements that were not
his own.
His hair was slowly beginning to grey.
The night when everything shattered had been the end of a normal day. The voice was not as
strong, but whatever was in his head sat oddly, as if it were unsettled and expectant. Overall,
it was ominous, but Barrus was too set on hiding it to realize what this may have meant for him.
He didn't want to be evil. He didn't want to be a witch. He didn't want to die.
His home seemed too small for him that evening. It had only two rooms, the main living area and
a bedroom in the back. Barrus had seated himself at the table, clomping down onto the bench at
one side and setting his boots flat on the wooden floor. Clasping his hands and resting his
forearms on the table, he leaned forward with a swinging twist of his sweaty blonde hair and
stared into space.
It felt as if he were just taking a short rest, to ease his cluttered brain.
Four hours had passed.
He would have continued to sit there for much longer, if not for one startling realization --
his head had miraculously silenced. Suddenly, his vision swam and his eyelids blinked, as
everything warped around him. He was awakening, coming out of a trance--
And it leapt onto him more powerfully than it ever had before. It dug its claws into his mind
and almost made his eyes bug out. Barrus fought at it, tried to push it away... The sensation
was too much, like a wave that had finally washed coolly onto his feet, only to pull back and
tease him again.
"Go away." He hissed through his gritted teeth. His voice echoed off the walls.
"...You'll regret it." Barrus didn't know it yet, but his moving lips were producing a sound.
He was replying to himself, the creature was using his mouth to make its soft, vapor-like
ghosts of words.
"You'll regret it," It said through him.
"I already do."
"You need me."
"You've done nothing for me."
"You have no idea what I've done."
Barrus was hunching over again. His spine and the muscles of his back spasmed with his desperate
effort to keep control over something that had already long consumed him. His face was dripping
and the warmth from the fireplace to his left suddenly seemed to hot. That side of his body was
aching, searing, screaming...and everything else, in contrast, felt shockingly cold.
Like a corpse.
"They're afraid of you." It whispered.
"They don't know."
"We'll tell them."
"We won't."
"We can be powerful, strong enough so that no one can touch us." It teased, it taunted, it
baited and licked at his insides like a honeyed tongue, leaving a gooey residue in its wake.
Barrus was getting dazed and dizzy... the flickering dance of the firelight gave the shadows a
strobe effect, burning at his irises and eating at the human part of his brain.
His world swam and screamed. Barrus hissed his objections, but the voice just kept coming,
talking half through his lips and half within his skull. It was a no-win situation, Barrus
knew, and his hope scuttled back into a corner of his mind, as his consciousness became thicker
and thicker.
"Go away." His words were slurred, drunken.
"This is a Gift, what you will have. Do you want to deny it, Mortal, do you dare--"
Barrus left no time for negotiations. His attempts to fight this disease was based on instinct,
now, animalistic and desperate. "Get out of my head!!" The uncontrolled volume of his voice rose
and filled the room with a snap so sharp that the firelight almost seemed to shudder and shift
away from him. "Get OU--"
"Barrus?"
The sound was like a tiny thread that drew him vaguely into a peephole to reality. The woman's
voice was raw and real, so human to him that it almost seemed foreign. The haze in front of
Barrus' red-rimmed eyes cleared enough so that he could see the worried form of his wife
standing in front of him on the other side of the table.
Her dark eyes were wide and wary. How much had she heard? Barrus felt his heart ping at the
mere sight of her. The woman was named Alexis, and her beauty was the kind that, although not
perfect, would ripen gracefully with age. Her dark brown hair was piled up at the back of her
head and her slight shoulders were adorned with a simple dress. Nothing was fancy in these
times, and Alexis was no exception. She was sweaty and unkempt, and looked exhausted. A thin
hand spread across the wide expanse of her swollen belly in an almost protective gesture, and
she studied him with tense lines running across her lips.
Was she afraid of him, wary for their unborn child? Barrus couldn't bear the thought, and those
images came to him often. After contracting the demon within his brain he realized just what
danger he may end up posing to the ones he loved, and came to the painful conclusion that he
may soon never be able to see them again. He had always loved his wife and looked forward to
bearing a son or daughter... but now, after this, he realized just how intense his feelings
were. Why was it that the true magnitude of his love had to be brought out by tragedy?
The longer he thought these things to himself, the longer his wife stared. Finally, the webs
across her mouth drew downward into a frown and she shifted off to one side with a rustle,
moving around the table and thus towards him. Barrus saw this and panicked, suddenly so very
afraid that she would see something that she shouldn't have.
He pushed his head up from his hands and scooted back in his chair a little, too mindless at
this point to realize just how jerkily he moved. "No!" He cried, loud enough to startle her.
And, as her eyebrows knitted and she jolted he tried to recover, pushing his voice into a more
normal tone that was almost too soft to hear.
"I'm fine," He said. Barrus tried not to growl this. He could feel it, the creature pushing
inside of him and trying to get out, trying to expose itself to the woman. It took all of his
efforts to keep it subdued, although he knew that he had little time.
"You look ill," Alexis said. This was an understatement, and she felt almost foolish for saying
it. Her eyes, however, the almost terrified look on her face seemed to make up for it tenfold.
Her words were trite, but her expression was impacting.
"I'm fine," Barrus said again, stressing the words this time. Alexis clearly didn't believe
him, and with a shift and groan--the pressure, it was becoming physical now--he managed to
utter, "I just have a lot on my mind." Ha. She had no idea.
"...Can you tell me about it?"
"Later. I'll come to bed in a short while, we can talk then."
She looked hesitant, but also relieved. Barrus had always refused to talk to her; he had always
found some excuse... and although she was no less in the dark than she had been before, at least
he was finally offering to open a link between them. She shifted her weight, ran her thumb down
the slope of her belly carefully, and moistened her lips with a vague and tense glisten.
"I talked to the midwife today. She says that it will be soon. Tomorrow..." Why wasn't he
looking at her? That wild glint in his eyes... It was unnerving. Alexis visibly hesitated for a
moment. "Tomorrow, she'll come and stay with us."
"That soon?"
His words were clipped in a way that seemed to close the conversation where it stood. Alexis
felt the corners of her eyes crinkle a little and her chest constricted. Warily, she took a
step backwards. "Yes." And he offered only a nod, not even bothering to make a vocal effort any
longer.
"...I'll be in our room." She said, and was about to add something more to that. However, she
changed her mind and simply retreated through the wooden door that separated their sleeping
area from the main room. Carefully, she shifted a glance in his direction over one shoulder as
she left... but he didn't even put his face her way.
As she closed the door, she swore that she heard someone hissing into the air behind her with a
low, sinister tone.
It was as if Barrus had held his breath during the entire conversation. When his wife left the
room his burning lungs reached their limit and shoved air out through his lips, pulling him back
out of control. With his last ebbs of strength he slammed his palms against the table and heaved
himself to his feet -- he had to leave the house.
And then, without warning, something violently shoved onto him. It was physical, although Barrus
could not see it. With a jerk and a crack he was sent hurtling back into his seat, and his
first lacings of fear turned into blatant panic.
"...No..." He hissed.
"Louder."
"I won't let you get the best of me." Again, he spoke low.
"Louder."
"No."
"Let your wife hear you."
"Damn you."
"Then let us both be damned."
"No!" The word came out a strangled roar, and along with it came a strong crash. Barrus cast a
glance to one side through his sweat-teared eyes, and realized that his fist had slammed onto
the table. A silent, painfully tense moment passed... so silent that he could hear his wife
breathing in the other room.
"She sounds scared."
"Shut up."
"Do you hear that? She's puffing."
"Leave me alone!"
By this time Barrus was having a full conversation with himself, to the point where he did not
realize just how strange this sounded. For, as time went on the voice sounded increasingly
familiar, fitted more and more into place... and slowly but surely, began to radiate its
thoughts into his head. He was beginning to sense the direction that it was going, and even his
hazy glimpse down that path turned his bones into ice.
"I'll tell you what..." The voice, the voice that was his own and yet didn't belong to him
seemed to ominously shift tone. Barrus didn't want to listen, but his lips freezed and said
what the creature wanted him to say, his legs stiffened and held him firmly into his seat.
"Barrus?" His wife's voice came filtering from the other room.
"...There are plenty of people in this house who are not you."
Barrus, the human side of him, the side that was already half-way falling into a pit that had
no end, felt his blood grow sharp. His veins tore and split into fraying shards, so intense was
his terror. "Leave her alone!" He cried.
"Who said anything about your wife?" His vocal cords replied in a song-like calm.
"Barrus?" She sounded so far away.
Barrus' nostrils flared and his fingernails curled little splinters from the wooden table. And
then, suddenly, with a rush of fear he felt that presence inside of him shift into a cool and
relieving mist... it was unlatching itself from him. Realizing what was happening, Barrus let
out a cry and tensed all of the muscles tightly into his body, squeezing up his mind like a
fist... anything to keep it inside.
"Leave them alone!!" He roared, and with a jerk his body was heaved upward. He lost all
coherency, all sense of movement, and there was a jolting pain in his shoulder as he struck a
wall, the corner of the fireplace, a shelf... Wincing, he clenched his hands to the side of his
face and squeezed his eyes shut, his nostrils and his mouth. Anything, anything to keep the
danger at bay.
He couldn't breathe.
He couldn't think.
He couldn't....
From within the deep recesses of the family bedroom, his wife began to scream.
End Part 8/?
To Be Continued.
And every sound I hear is the sound of your voice
Why are you haunting me?
Why are you haunting me?
Why can't I let you go?"
--Stabbing Westward
"For When You Return"
Part VIII
Location: The Time of the Sixth World
Two Eternities Before Present Day
It had been centuries since the child called Kai had been felled to her certain doom by the
arrows of the same men who had at one time put food on her plate. However, these later times
were not that different then they were before. Scholars spoke of an age of advancement, when
technology was at its peak, yes... but they had also spoken of war, a war so harsh and so long
that it had eradicated everything that they had built, so that life had to start anew. People
lived as they did in the past, and machinery was at a low. It seemed, many people thought
bitterly, that technology only rose in terms of weaponry.
And they still feared magic.
They hated it, in fact.
The man called Barrus Myre had seen a number of witches slain in his lifetime, and he could not
say that he felt any empathy for them. His hatred was kept strong by his fear, fed by stories
that he had heard since childhood -- magic was evil, and once a person had been touched by it...
He was lost. Everything that came in contact with him was lost.
Barrus had always considered himself to be a good man and a fair man when it came to the bare
bones of life. He loved his wife, he loved his parents, and he loved the village in which he
lived with a great passion. He would have died for it, and everything that he did was only for
the purpose of helping those that he felt strongly for.
...He wasn't evil.
Was he?
But the voice in his head told him something entirely different.
It had just -been- there one day. He had been feeling achy and listless since that morning, and
the feeling hadn't improved into the afternoon. It was then, while he was chopping a load of
firewood, when he first heard it. He had nearly cut his foot off in his surprise. Whirring
about, he cast his face around the clearing where he stood, but there was nothing there.
Nothing.
A songbird had trilled. Teasingly.
That had been a month ago. He had tried to hide it. At first, it was easier. The voice was
nothing more than a whisper, something that came to him unexpected and quietly, like a hush.
Now, however, as time began to wear on him this plague took it's toll, too. The words in his
head got stronger, came more frequently, and at night he whispered statements that were not
his own.
His hair was slowly beginning to grey.
The night when everything shattered had been the end of a normal day. The voice was not as
strong, but whatever was in his head sat oddly, as if it were unsettled and expectant. Overall,
it was ominous, but Barrus was too set on hiding it to realize what this may have meant for him.
He didn't want to be evil. He didn't want to be a witch. He didn't want to die.
His home seemed too small for him that evening. It had only two rooms, the main living area and
a bedroom in the back. Barrus had seated himself at the table, clomping down onto the bench at
one side and setting his boots flat on the wooden floor. Clasping his hands and resting his
forearms on the table, he leaned forward with a swinging twist of his sweaty blonde hair and
stared into space.
It felt as if he were just taking a short rest, to ease his cluttered brain.
Four hours had passed.
He would have continued to sit there for much longer, if not for one startling realization --
his head had miraculously silenced. Suddenly, his vision swam and his eyelids blinked, as
everything warped around him. He was awakening, coming out of a trance--
And it leapt onto him more powerfully than it ever had before. It dug its claws into his mind
and almost made his eyes bug out. Barrus fought at it, tried to push it away... The sensation
was too much, like a wave that had finally washed coolly onto his feet, only to pull back and
tease him again.
"Go away." He hissed through his gritted teeth. His voice echoed off the walls.
"...You'll regret it." Barrus didn't know it yet, but his moving lips were producing a sound.
He was replying to himself, the creature was using his mouth to make its soft, vapor-like
ghosts of words.
"You'll regret it," It said through him.
"I already do."
"You need me."
"You've done nothing for me."
"You have no idea what I've done."
Barrus was hunching over again. His spine and the muscles of his back spasmed with his desperate
effort to keep control over something that had already long consumed him. His face was dripping
and the warmth from the fireplace to his left suddenly seemed to hot. That side of his body was
aching, searing, screaming...and everything else, in contrast, felt shockingly cold.
Like a corpse.
"They're afraid of you." It whispered.
"They don't know."
"We'll tell them."
"We won't."
"We can be powerful, strong enough so that no one can touch us." It teased, it taunted, it
baited and licked at his insides like a honeyed tongue, leaving a gooey residue in its wake.
Barrus was getting dazed and dizzy... the flickering dance of the firelight gave the shadows a
strobe effect, burning at his irises and eating at the human part of his brain.
His world swam and screamed. Barrus hissed his objections, but the voice just kept coming,
talking half through his lips and half within his skull. It was a no-win situation, Barrus
knew, and his hope scuttled back into a corner of his mind, as his consciousness became thicker
and thicker.
"Go away." His words were slurred, drunken.
"This is a Gift, what you will have. Do you want to deny it, Mortal, do you dare--"
Barrus left no time for negotiations. His attempts to fight this disease was based on instinct,
now, animalistic and desperate. "Get out of my head!!" The uncontrolled volume of his voice rose
and filled the room with a snap so sharp that the firelight almost seemed to shudder and shift
away from him. "Get OU--"
"Barrus?"
The sound was like a tiny thread that drew him vaguely into a peephole to reality. The woman's
voice was raw and real, so human to him that it almost seemed foreign. The haze in front of
Barrus' red-rimmed eyes cleared enough so that he could see the worried form of his wife
standing in front of him on the other side of the table.
Her dark eyes were wide and wary. How much had she heard? Barrus felt his heart ping at the
mere sight of her. The woman was named Alexis, and her beauty was the kind that, although not
perfect, would ripen gracefully with age. Her dark brown hair was piled up at the back of her
head and her slight shoulders were adorned with a simple dress. Nothing was fancy in these
times, and Alexis was no exception. She was sweaty and unkempt, and looked exhausted. A thin
hand spread across the wide expanse of her swollen belly in an almost protective gesture, and
she studied him with tense lines running across her lips.
Was she afraid of him, wary for their unborn child? Barrus couldn't bear the thought, and those
images came to him often. After contracting the demon within his brain he realized just what
danger he may end up posing to the ones he loved, and came to the painful conclusion that he
may soon never be able to see them again. He had always loved his wife and looked forward to
bearing a son or daughter... but now, after this, he realized just how intense his feelings
were. Why was it that the true magnitude of his love had to be brought out by tragedy?
The longer he thought these things to himself, the longer his wife stared. Finally, the webs
across her mouth drew downward into a frown and she shifted off to one side with a rustle,
moving around the table and thus towards him. Barrus saw this and panicked, suddenly so very
afraid that she would see something that she shouldn't have.
He pushed his head up from his hands and scooted back in his chair a little, too mindless at
this point to realize just how jerkily he moved. "No!" He cried, loud enough to startle her.
And, as her eyebrows knitted and she jolted he tried to recover, pushing his voice into a more
normal tone that was almost too soft to hear.
"I'm fine," He said. Barrus tried not to growl this. He could feel it, the creature pushing
inside of him and trying to get out, trying to expose itself to the woman. It took all of his
efforts to keep it subdued, although he knew that he had little time.
"You look ill," Alexis said. This was an understatement, and she felt almost foolish for saying
it. Her eyes, however, the almost terrified look on her face seemed to make up for it tenfold.
Her words were trite, but her expression was impacting.
"I'm fine," Barrus said again, stressing the words this time. Alexis clearly didn't believe
him, and with a shift and groan--the pressure, it was becoming physical now--he managed to
utter, "I just have a lot on my mind." Ha. She had no idea.
"...Can you tell me about it?"
"Later. I'll come to bed in a short while, we can talk then."
She looked hesitant, but also relieved. Barrus had always refused to talk to her; he had always
found some excuse... and although she was no less in the dark than she had been before, at least
he was finally offering to open a link between them. She shifted her weight, ran her thumb down
the slope of her belly carefully, and moistened her lips with a vague and tense glisten.
"I talked to the midwife today. She says that it will be soon. Tomorrow..." Why wasn't he
looking at her? That wild glint in his eyes... It was unnerving. Alexis visibly hesitated for a
moment. "Tomorrow, she'll come and stay with us."
"That soon?"
His words were clipped in a way that seemed to close the conversation where it stood. Alexis
felt the corners of her eyes crinkle a little and her chest constricted. Warily, she took a
step backwards. "Yes." And he offered only a nod, not even bothering to make a vocal effort any
longer.
"...I'll be in our room." She said, and was about to add something more to that. However, she
changed her mind and simply retreated through the wooden door that separated their sleeping
area from the main room. Carefully, she shifted a glance in his direction over one shoulder as
she left... but he didn't even put his face her way.
As she closed the door, she swore that she heard someone hissing into the air behind her with a
low, sinister tone.
It was as if Barrus had held his breath during the entire conversation. When his wife left the
room his burning lungs reached their limit and shoved air out through his lips, pulling him back
out of control. With his last ebbs of strength he slammed his palms against the table and heaved
himself to his feet -- he had to leave the house.
And then, without warning, something violently shoved onto him. It was physical, although Barrus
could not see it. With a jerk and a crack he was sent hurtling back into his seat, and his
first lacings of fear turned into blatant panic.
"...No..." He hissed.
"Louder."
"I won't let you get the best of me." Again, he spoke low.
"Louder."
"No."
"Let your wife hear you."
"Damn you."
"Then let us both be damned."
"No!" The word came out a strangled roar, and along with it came a strong crash. Barrus cast a
glance to one side through his sweat-teared eyes, and realized that his fist had slammed onto
the table. A silent, painfully tense moment passed... so silent that he could hear his wife
breathing in the other room.
"She sounds scared."
"Shut up."
"Do you hear that? She's puffing."
"Leave me alone!"
By this time Barrus was having a full conversation with himself, to the point where he did not
realize just how strange this sounded. For, as time went on the voice sounded increasingly
familiar, fitted more and more into place... and slowly but surely, began to radiate its
thoughts into his head. He was beginning to sense the direction that it was going, and even his
hazy glimpse down that path turned his bones into ice.
"I'll tell you what..." The voice, the voice that was his own and yet didn't belong to him
seemed to ominously shift tone. Barrus didn't want to listen, but his lips freezed and said
what the creature wanted him to say, his legs stiffened and held him firmly into his seat.
"Barrus?" His wife's voice came filtering from the other room.
"...There are plenty of people in this house who are not you."
Barrus, the human side of him, the side that was already half-way falling into a pit that had
no end, felt his blood grow sharp. His veins tore and split into fraying shards, so intense was
his terror. "Leave her alone!" He cried.
"Who said anything about your wife?" His vocal cords replied in a song-like calm.
"Barrus?" She sounded so far away.
Barrus' nostrils flared and his fingernails curled little splinters from the wooden table. And
then, suddenly, with a rush of fear he felt that presence inside of him shift into a cool and
relieving mist... it was unlatching itself from him. Realizing what was happening, Barrus let
out a cry and tensed all of the muscles tightly into his body, squeezing up his mind like a
fist... anything to keep it inside.
"Leave them alone!!" He roared, and with a jerk his body was heaved upward. He lost all
coherency, all sense of movement, and there was a jolting pain in his shoulder as he struck a
wall, the corner of the fireplace, a shelf... Wincing, he clenched his hands to the side of his
face and squeezed his eyes shut, his nostrils and his mouth. Anything, anything to keep the
danger at bay.
He couldn't breathe.
He couldn't think.
He couldn't....
From within the deep recesses of the family bedroom, his wife began to scream.
End Part 8/?
To Be Continued.