Chapter Five: Though We're Strangers Till Now

"And I hang like a star,
Fucking glow in the dark,
For all those staring eyes to see,
Like the ones we've wished on.
But now I'm confused.
Is this death really you?
Do these dreams have any meaning?
No.
No, I think it is more like a ghost
That has been following us both
Something vague that we are not seeing,
Something more like a feeling."

"Something Vague" by Bright Eyes

Erik had not woken to sunlight on his face in over twenty years. The warmth of it was disconcerting, but not unpleasant. He stared blankly at the pale ceiling above him and tried to make sense of his dream. The specter had called him "The Artifact"; What could it possibly mean? He rolled the word around his mind as he stretched languorously in the soft confines of the bed. Could I be the artifact of my time? Erik chewed his lip thoughtfully; that thought was one of the more sensible things to occur in the last twenty-four hours.

This is of course assuming that you're not insane, he reminded himself. Well, he had to concede that point to himself, there was no evidence to say he wasn't. And the fact that we're having this discussion supports it, his inner demons chuckled. Erik frowned at sheer amount of voices that were appearing in his head, and decided that he had to distract himself.

Pulling on his now dry trousers, Erik looked around his room. His eyes lingered on the clock by the bed; it showed the exact time in glowing red numbers. He picked up the light thing and examined it closer. Must be some trick with electricity, he thought in admiration as he turned it over in his hand. It's far too light for any clockwork. Setting the mall clock back down, he turned to face the door into the bathroom. What new surprises lie in store?

He knocked twice and then opened the door with a small amount of trepidation. Erik's shoulders sagged in relief as he recognized the toilet and bath had only received small modifications in the past hundred years.

He found a shirt folded over the side of the bathtub and a note attached to the mirror by a thin, clear strip with an adhesive on one side; now that's clever, he thought idly before turning his attention to the erratic, tight script.

Erik,

I ran out to do some shopping and various other errands. I should be back by one, so feel free to explore the house a little bit until then. I trust you to be smart enough not to poke anything metal into the electric sockets, or start a fire, but if you take ANYTHING apart without knowing exactly what it is, what it does, and how to put it back together, I'll kill you.

Ben

ps: Hope the shirt works; it's all I had. We'll work out something better later.

He raised his eyebrows at the threat of death; well, now I'm very curious about this house of oddities. Next, he examined the shirt Ben had put out for him. It was a soft material in a dark brick red that he approved of. He pulled it on over his head as the small buttons stopped ten centimeters down from the almost non-existent collar. The sleeves were far too short, but he rolled them up to his elbow to hide the fact. Tucking the blasted thing in as best he could, Erik regarded himself in the mirror.

The soft material hung loosely on his thin frame making him appear all the more skeletal. Beggars cannot complain, he reminded himself as he ran a bandaged hand through his corbeau hair.

He froze in mid-motion and stared hard at his reflection. There was something different about his hair, and it took him several moments to realize what it was. He'd started getting grey hair since he'd hit what he guessed to be his fifties, and since then it had spread steadily across his scalp.

And now it was gone. Completely. His hair was as dark and full has it had been when he was in his prime.

You had to be changed. Your health is required.

The specter's voice echoed through his mind like a death sentence Interesting contrast to his sudden health.. He unwrapped the bandages around his hands with a calm kind of dread. His knuckles and palms were lined with crimson stripes from his wounds, but not age. He flexed his fingers and felt a familiar power flow through them; he had come to hate these alabaster hands.

Looking for further evidence, Erik pulled up the front of his shirt and examined the taut, muscular belly in the mirror jaw agape in shock. It cannot be true!

Finally, he took a shuddering breath and pulled his mask away. His face was still as ugly as the day he had been born, but it was not old. Judging by the tightness of the skin that stretched down from his cheekbones, and the faint hint of crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, Erik knew that he must be anywhere between thirty and thirty-five. At his physical peak once more.

Any other man his age would have cheered, danced, and gone running out to embrace his newfound youth in a bold new world. Erik, however, was hit with the irrational urge to weep. Good stuff.

He'd waited SO long to die! He'd tempted fate and men equally to take his wretched life, and STILL he had lived. He should've died from an infection in his youth because of his twisted flesh, but God had cursed him with almost miraculously good health and longevity! And finally—FINALLY—his body had aged and his heart had grown weak. He had felt Death following over his shoulder, and welcomed her presence as he would an old friend.

Now even that had been stolen from him!

Erik raged at the unfairness of it all and slammed his fist in to the tiled wall with a roar. The bright flash of pain that surged up his arm washed away the blinding anger and cleared his mind. He took a deep steadying breath and ran his throbbing knuckles over the cracked tiles he had hit. Acting like a child would not help him understand his bizarre situation any better, he reminded himself.

The specter had spoken of an equation. What was an equation except a logic problem, a riddle? There was no riddle on earth that Erik could not solve when he put his keen mind to it. All he needed was the proper knowledge.

With a new purpose to focus on, or at least a sufficient distraction, Erik replaced his mask and walked into the living room.

His gaze settled on a large black box with a black glass front panel that the sofa faced. Moving over he placed his hand on the matte surface; it had the texture of etched glass, but not the density. He made a mental note to ask Ben about it later. Along the bottom of the dark glass panel, there was a row of buttons. He cautiously pushed the one marked 'Power'.

The device sprang to life instantly, and Erik jumped back slightly in surprise as noise and color suddenly filled the screen. Figures of near perfect photographic quality and crisp clear sound followed their every movement. A disembodied female voice was prattling on about some product to be bought or another, but Erik's focus was on the tight, thin bodies of the women that laughed as they moved through an indoor market. So pants are part of a woman's daily wardrobe now. He couldn't say he minded that much as he allowed his eyes to roam freely over the lithe forms before him.

Leaning extremely close to the glass panel, he could see that the images were created by thousands of red, green, and blue lights, each one only slightly bigger than the head of a pin.

Clever, he thought in awe, running the backs of his fingers over the glass. A tingle of static electricity sent goose bumps up his arm.

Thirty seconds later, he felt like a perverse voyeur and turned the apparently pointless machine off.

Looking around the room, all of the other machines seemed far more daunting than the viewing device, each one covered in an almost obscene amount of dials and buttons.

Out of nowhere a surge of hunger rushed over him, and Erik suddenly realized that he hadn't eaten in four days. Well, technically it's been over a hundred years, he thought with a frown as he wondered into the kitchen to face the possible horrors the that lay in the icebox.

He was greatly relieved when he recognized most of the items inside, despite the foreign packaging. Glancing back, his eyes lit up when he noticed a large bowl of fresh, bright tangerines. He hadn't been able to get good tangerines in over forty years, not since Persia. That made up his mind; he pulled a bottle of red wine out of the icebox and set it on the counter to warm slightly while he hunted for a plate.

Seven minutes later, he set his prizes down on the small desk in his room, shut the door, and locked it. It was totally in keeping with his current streak of luck that he would have been sent through time with his least practical mask, the one solely designed to terrify. It hindered his breathing significantly, and there was no way to eat with it on. So until he worked out a way to cut some of the leather away, this would be how he'd have to take his meals.

Digging his fingers into the fleshy peel of a tangerine, Erik couldn't stop a flash of contentment as he felt the long forgotten sting of citric acid on his fingers.

All in all, he had been in far worse situations. Certainly, he had never been in a stranger circumstance, but he could sense no immediate danger. He slipped a piece of the fruit into his mouth and popped it with his teeth letting the sweet juice gush over his tongue.

When Ben returned, Erik decided he would question her on…well, everything about this new world, and once he was equipped with the proper knowledge, he would be able attack the question of how he would return to Paris and get on the business of killing himself properly and be done with everything before something else fantastical happened, like being wished away to the Goblin King.