November 7, 1860, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

One day after the 1860 Presidential election.

It had all started with headaches. That had been years ago, though Alfred couldn't really remember exactly how many years it'd been. The headaches had come and gone, as so many things did, and he hadn't thought much of them. The life of a nation was a maelstrom of tiny ills that emerged and resolved at the turn of the wind. Sure, Alfred moaned about his sore head to Buchanan, and to Matthew, and really anyone else who would listen, but he never really thought about their cause. He'd just needed space to vent.

Then, they'd started to happen every day. Then they'd gotten worse. At one point, he'd lay in bed for nearly seventeen hours with all the curtains drawn and candles snuffed just to make sure he wouldn't vomit. He'd tried everything. Medicines, tonics, laudanum. He'd tried changing his diet and drinking more water, less water, more beer, less beer. He'd replaced all his pillows and forsaken wearing a tie for a week just to see if it would help. The only thing that particular experiment had accomplished was earn him reprimands from half a dozen senators affronted by his being underdressed.

Migraines notwithstanding, he tried to function as normally as he could, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. The headaches began to affect him in different ways: confusing his memory, impairing his speech, making him think one thing but say another. He couldn't make heads or tails of it.

Then he'd started losing time. He'd wake up at dawn in his nightshirt, go to wash his face, and suddenly he was fully dressed and sitting with foreign ministers at the White House, halfway through lunch with the sun high overhead and no memory of anything that had happened between for the last six hours.

He wished he had someone else to confide in, but he didn't know what he would've said. "Yes I'm very sorry Mr. President," he tried to imagine saying to James Buchanan, the great lump of a bachelor who'd been occupying the Oval Office for the last four years, "I know you're very busy and have a lot on your plate, but you wouldn't happen to have any idea why I keep waking up in the middle of doing something without knowing where I am, how I got there, or what I've been doing for several hours of my life?"

Not knowing who or what to turn to, Alfred did what Alfred was incredibly good at doing: he ignored the problem and hoped it would disappear on his own. In his defense, this was how many ills resolved among nations. Economy given you the sniffles? Wait it out. Bad crops giving you arthritis? Take it easy for a while. Massive storms give you a cold? Sleep it off.

Unfortunately, by the time the presidential election rolled around, this passive approach had had done nothing but grow a giant bezoar of worry in the pit of Alfred's stomach, a truth that he'd refused to acknowledge for months.

"It's getting worse," he confronted himself in the mirror, glaring into his own tired eyes. "You're getting worse, and you don't even know what the hell it is."

Then, something strange happened. Alfred's reflection moved, while Alfred himself stood still. It glared at him hard and its eyes seemed to darken, from sky blue to a churning Gulf indigo. Then, it snarled back its lips and began to speak.

"Yes you fucking do," said the reflection in a deep drawl. It sounded tinny and muffled as if trapped behind glass. "You know exactly what's wrong, Yankee Boy."

Startled beyond comprehension, Alfred drew back a fist and punched. The mirror cracked into dozens of shards, and while a few tinkled onto the ground, those that remained reflected Alfred's expression back at him in a mosaic of horror. He stood there, heart pounding, breathing heavy, bleeding fist drawn back at the ready.

That was the first, but certainly not the last time that Alfred encountered what he dubbed The Other in the days leading up to the general election. The Other was, as far as Alfred could tell, his own reflection, but it was not him. He wasn't sure what it was, but he knew it scared him shitless. He removed all the mirrors from his life, and fixed his hair and his tie blind each morning. He still caught glimpses of his reflection in dark windows at night, the glare on his own glasses, tepid ponds, and puddles after rain. He couldn't avoid it all, but he could try.

Alfred had always hated the idea of magic. It wasn't that he didn't believe in magic, despite what he told others, and whatever else Arthur assumed. Alfred Jones knew in his bones that magic was real—after all, what was he?—but it was easier to lie to himself. Acknowledging the truth drudged up unpleasant memories that he wished desperately to forget. New England had been a starved, angry, and superstitious place, back then. There hadn't been any witchcraft at work when their children died and General Winter stole their animals, but there'd been enough fear and anger to expedite their children's eternally-young playmate from the witchfinder's prison to the hangman's noose. That had been the first time Alfred had ever died. He'd been too small to hang quickly; it'd taken nearly an hour. He'd very nearly died a second time clawing himself out of the shallow grave two days later. He'd spat up soil for days, and vowed to never again be called a witch.

It seemed as though the witches had found him. It'd only taken a few hundred years for them to track him down.

"You can feel it coming, can't you?" The Other's voice had begun to follow him in recent days, a waking nightmare stalking his thoughts. "You know what will happen." He could practically feel the noose tightening around his neck again, and he tore at the knot of his tie.

Alfred knew by now that he had to tell someone, but who? Buchanan? The man was about to leave office, and anyway, he'd never particularly liked Alfred or understood what he was. Did he dare write to Matthew? To Arthur, even? Would they think he was crazy? Would they interpret it as weakness, insanity? Relations with the Empire were already tenuous enough, and he knew Matt was growing wary of him, what with all the western expansion. He hadn't spoken to any of the other nations in eons, and he couldn't possibly reveal his plight to foreign powers without inviting some kind of trade war or invasion.

It wasn't until the day after the election that the headaches and the blackouts and The Other coalesced into a new, all-encompassing reality. They'd only just begun tallying votes, and the College wouldn't be summoned to Washington for weeks, but Alfred knew. He felt it in his bones. He, Alfred Jones, was happy, but there was a boiling rage festering in his stomach that rose up through his throat, past his nose and into his brain like boiling champagne.

"I will not be lorded over by bleeding-heart abolitionists," growled the Other.

This time, the words weren't in his head. Alfred was saying those words, speaking that drawl. Alfred's own throat was rumbling around the hatred, Alfred's lips drawing back to bare Alfred's teeth. As if in a dream, his feet carried him to the window. In the glare of the mid-afternoon sun, he could just barely see his own reflection, translucent and furious.

"I will keep what is mine."

Alfred's vision started to go dark, head feeling fuzzy, and he began to wonder how long The Other had been doing this without his knowing. He wondered if this was the reason for the lost time, the migraines, everything else. He wondered at what point he'd would've still had time to tell someone, or if it'd always been too late. His hands moved without his accord and clenched into fists so tight he wondered if the nails would draw blood.

"You can burn for all I care."

Historical notes:

1. Laudanum was a tincture (medicine steeped in liquid solution) of opium. It was widely prescribed for pain, depression, mental instability, etc. I know this sounds kind of ludicrous now, but just try to imagine treating your everyday ills without over the counter pain medications like Tylenol. Now imagine trying to treat clinical depression or anxiety without any understanding of psychology or access to antidepressants. People used what they had available—in this case, lots of opium. For context, Aspirin would not be synthesized until 1899.

2. One of the reasons Lincoln's victory in 1860 was so controversial is that Lincoln didn't even appear on the ballots of some states. Most of the states that excluded him from the ballot were also the states that would later secede from the Union. That alone illustrates how much Southerners disliked Lincoln before the election even began. Of course, it was nothing compared to what would come after.

3. The College referred to here is the Electoral College, which is the United States' method of selecting presidents. Unlike many modern democracies, the United States Presidential election is not determined by popular vote. Rather, each state is awarded a certain number of votes to cast in each election. The number of electors in each state corresponds to the number of senators and representatives from that state in Congress. While each state has just two senators, the number of House representatives per state are ostensibly determined by a state's population, but there are a lot of problems in the modern distribution. Most states (not all—Maine and Nebraska being exceptions) cast all available electoral votes for one candidate, and which candidate those votes go to is (supposed to be) reflective of the state's popular vote.

In this particular election, 1860, there was incredible dissent after the apparent popular-vote victory of Lincoln, so much so that some feared the College might not ever be assembled in Washington to officially record their votes necessary to elect him president.