"What is dark within me, illumine."
― John Milton, Paradise Lost


Her Shadow

Sleep had long since ceased to be a necessity, but now he often indulged in the blissful act to dodge the mediocrity of immortality. When a man has his days numbered, every moment has value. When he lived with the supposed certainty of death, he treated each second like currency. There was far too much to create, whether in the form of sound or stone, of pain or illusion. Sleep seemed such an idle activity to waste such a precious commodity upon. He only surrendered to the hands of slumber when sleep deprivation had forced the appearance of hallucinatory characters into his perception, when shadows began to look like phantom specters in his peripheral vision and paranoia sent nonexistent voices to taunt him. Had it not been for that exhaustion-induced insanity or the threat of his body to permanently fail, he would have never shut his eyes and entered the realm of Morpheus. Time was now doled out to him in the surplus, and he had no desire to soak up each endless, banal moment as each one came, stretching out like endless steppingstones into the abyss of eternity.

Certainly, the hundred plus years which had passed found him lost in plenty of other preoccupations. Science and technology had advanced at an astonishing rate, and he soaked up all that he could like the curious sponge he was. His eyes beheld celestial bodies discovered by telescopes sent into the ether of space. What once were tiny points of light became colorful gaseous clouds and long distant planets beyond the solar system. Computer systems became his new playground, and he could think of a million ways to use them for nefarious purposes which were now thoroughly forbidden to him if he wished to seek redemption or avoid terrible discomfort. It would have been easier than ever to become a rich man using a computer, through means both honest and not, but he knew what route the former Opera Ghost would have chosen. He witnessed medical interventions that seemed miraculous, surgeries which would have seemed like the works of fiction during his lifetime. Had he been born in the current century he would have had the chance at a relatively normal life with a surgically reconstructed face. Music changed too, in ways that were either inspiring or grotesque, and he discovered his own compositions evolved with the passing eras.

Yes, there were many things to keep him busy, but it still did not dismiss the dismal reality of time and its overabundance in his life. Sleep was an easy escape, and it was where he found himself now, but even sleep had its faults. It was not always the oblivious refuge he sought, for dreams often came to plague him in that most vulnerable state. Most frequently they were crafted from the quilt work of memories sewn from his own tortured mortal life, but occasionally he was presented with the memories of others. These foreign memories came from the lives of past soul eaters and their victims. Lucius, being the most recent of the soul eaters, had his experiences presented most often and in more vivid detail.

Tonight, he was revisited once again with the most familiar of these imported memories, the death of Lucius over two millennia ago. It was always played through the eyes of Lucius himself. Erik relived the moment when Lucius saw the metallic flash of a blade and felt the heavy, thunderous impact to his torso. There was a pain so quick and intense that it felt surreal, followed by a dizziness which dropped him to his knees. All around him a mighty battle continued as he knelt helplessly on the soggy ground of that ancient Roman battlefield. He looked down to witness the viscera and blood spilling from his own gut and mixing in with the mud, a swirling vision of brown and crimson. For a moment he thought of it as a strangely beautiful painting. He tried to process the fatal nature of that moment as the sounds of men's cries and clashing weaponry faded out around him, leaving an eerie, pristine silence. Something soundlessly beckoned him, and he lifted his head from the gory image of his own splattered entrails to see a being before him. Erik knew this woman to be the Soul Eater to pre-date Lucius only this time the image was different, the woman's features were shimmering and morphing into something new…the memory was altering. The newly familiar face that he now looked upon did not belong in this memory.

Erik's eyes flew open as he violently jerked awake, his breath heavy. He sat up on the flimsy makeshift bed and rubbed his forehead.

Had the dream continued onto its usual course he would have witnessed the moment when Lucius met his predecessor, a female soul eater named Faustina. Once she had divulged the terms of his fate, Lucius, looking up from the messy display of his own bowels, haughtily replied in so many words that he would rather not.

"If you refuse, you shall forever be bound to a black void with only your consciousness to keep you company." she shrugged nonchalantly, as though his decision mattered little to her "Imagine an eternity with nothing save yourself to keep you company."

Unlike Erik, who, lying on his death bed had assumed he was damned to burn away in perdition, Lucius had believed, being a great warrior, he was destined for an afterlife in the paradise of Elysium. However, the Roman soldier had lived a life full of such cruelty and violence that he was assigned the fate of an Eater. There would be no never-ending paradise life preassigned to him and should he refuse that rare chance at redemption he would consent to something far worse than all the preconceived ideas of what a hell could be.

Erik generally awoke the moment following Lucius' assent to carry the mantle, but not tonight. The memory had been corrupted somehow.

This was the third time in a week this dream had harassed him. Always with the same altered ending. To what purpose would his mind insert Christine's face? It disturbed him.

Over the past few weeks, he had taken it upon himself to monitor and guard the little family who have moved into the slum of a building across the street. It was completely out of character for him, he never cared for the wellbeing of others before. He dismissed it as another preoccupation to smother the lonely, vast emptiness of immortality.

He still did not know much about the father and daughter, just a handful of things, really. The father, a very skilled violin player hailed from Sweden, and he carried with him the sadness of loss…his wife perhaps. Erik could hear the man mourned by way he played his violin. Even the sunniest of melodies were tainted by an undercurrent of a long-carried grief, something that any layman would never detect, but for a man such as Erik, a man made of music itself, it was as conspicuous as neon. The father was also terribly sick, Erik could sense the impending death of most beings when it lingered so closely on the horizon but, even if he lacked that ability, he could hear the rattling of the man's lungs as he coughed and wheezed from across the street. He knew Christine had recently lost her job, laid off due to the Covid pandemic most likely. Christine was the sole bread winner of the tiny familial unit; her father collected a small disability check each month. With the sudden shortage of income combined with her father's growing medical bills they had been forced into cheaper housing as a result.

Erik had followed the girl around as she left early every morning with a backpack full of resumes and a brown sack lunch as she sought new employment while her ailing father stayed at home. There were help wanted signs on shop windows all over the city, as waiters and café employees quit in droves, but it seemed she was particular in which positions she inquired upon. She staunchly avoided positions that would expose her to the general public.

He did not require the use of his portals, for in a city full of covered faces he could blend in almost seamlessly. Generally, he did not mingle with the rest of the world, but he couldn't help himself when circumstances allowed him the luxury. Still, he garnered second glances from time to time, for a simple cloth mask over the nose and mouth could not cover the total of his peculiarities.

His exact motivations for stalking the woman were unknown to him, even after days of speculation. And what of his unusual silent vow to protect the father and daughter? Boredom, perhaps? If it was a mental diversion he sought, there were so many other activities at his disposal. Something had pulled at him from the moment he heard her sweetly flawed voice from across the street that first night. It was not the voice itself, there were far superior singing voices in the world, but something within it. There was a breathtaking purity of soul there, but also the presence of a brokenness which lingered somewhere deep within. He could almost hear his own fracturing loneliness mirrored back in the timbre of her song. It all made him terribly curious and he, historically a slave to his own impulsivity, a fatal flaw which had brought his ruin in the past, could not resist investigating. He became her unrequested shadow, mirroring her comings and goings for days, weeks perhaps. Time really did bleed into itself, after all.

As he sat now, on his sad little bed made of blankets and discarded cushions, he knew today was yet another as the unwanted shade trailing her steps.

Hours passed as he sat like a faithful dog by his window, waiting for Christine to step onto the cracked steps of her buildings front stoop. Her routine was different today, leading an eagerly awaiting Erik to huff and scowl with impatience. He was sure he would look at this rare moment later and marvel that he was feeling the progression of time.

When she finally emerged, he felt a frustratingly alarming amount of relief as his heart picked up the anticipatory pace of an addict soon to gain his fix. He sprung to his feet like his spindly legs were made of tightly wound coils and rushed out the door. He locked his door as he left. It was secured with a lock of his own making and one that would be unfamiliar to the other squatters that frequented this building looking for free shelter. While he was not particularly attached to any of the items in the room he had chosen, save the violin, he now had a reason to remain in the space for longer than he had originally anticipated.

The cloth mask was already upon his marred face by the time he had left the delipidated building. It obscured the most troubling of his features while allowing him to assimilate with the city's population. His clothes, on the other hand, were another story. He had worn the same cheap black suit for what must have been several months now, and it certainly showed. To anyone on the street he must have appeared like the disheveled bum that he was.

It had been so long since he had cared about his attire. In his mortal life he treated clothing as though it were just another mask to hide behind. Every stitch he wore had to be impeccable and perfectly tailored to his needs. No expense was spared on his wardrobe which held all the finest in materials, right down to each button. Immortality had changed that. He no longer felt the need to keep up appearances, even during the handful of times he interacted with others, whether or not he was sent to claim them.

Perhaps he ought to get a new suit but doing so would require funds and he would be obliged to seek out revenue through honest means. All the occupations he would deem worthy to pursue were so dogmatic about identity and degrees that he had put it off for decades. He had no legal identity, save the one that he had created in his first life through false means…he had done so with the silly fantasy of one day acquiring a wife…and a second after his resurrection.

During his mentorship he recalled posing the question of identity to Lucius.

"And what am I to be now? A ghost forever?"

Lucius had laughed heartily, "Is that not what you have done for decades? Living like a little spider in the shadows who only emerges when something is caught in its web?"

Erik irritably shook his head, though he could not deny the truth of his mentors' words.

"What if I choose to leave this place?" He gestured to the surroundings of his cellar home, "What if I wish to finance a new home and I require employment? What shall I do if they require documentation of me?"

Lucius had shrugged. "Should you have the requirement of forgery then so be it."

Erik sneered, "Doesn't that break all of your precious little rules? Is that not dishonest?"

Lucius had already made it clear that dishonesty was corrosive to the soul and to be avoided at all costs.

With a frustrated sigh Lucius replied, "The laws of man do not concern us. Not all laws are based on morality. So long as no other soul is harmed by the forgery it satisfies the conditions of the rules." Lucius tapped his fingers against his temple, "Your soul will tell you whether something is correct, Erik, and furthermore, once I depart you shall retain all my knowledge and the knowledge of those who came before me."

That had piqued Erik's interest. "Knowledge? Of what sort?"

"Cultural and historical knowledge. Languages, and such," Lucius made a bored, dismissive gesture with the wave of his hand, "Emotional knowledge as well…but most importantly, memories, Erik. Though I fear they are not the sort you would like to have. They are part of the curse of our sentence."

Despite Lucius's warnings, Erik had broken the rules a handful of times in the early years of his sentence, while he was still under the guidance of his predecessor. He had stolen, lied, and committed one singular act of violence-old habits die quite hard-but each time he suffered the consequences.

Quite simply, he burned.

Somehow, his spirit seemed to ignite with a cauterizing heat. It was indescribable, language failed it. It was a pain so excruciating but perfect that it bordered on exquisite. He was sure it was an agony no mortal could ever withstand for it would kill them straightaway. The torture lingered for days as he prayed and begged for release. Each time Lucius would appear to the moaning, writhing skeleton, tsking and laughing at his successor's folly.

"That is your soul informing you that your behavior is incorrect," Lucius stated casually with an unapologetically supercilious tone.

It took a handful of those horrific experiences before Erik learned to guard his actions carefully.

During his second life, Erik had only required the use of an identity once for employment, as a remote consultant for an architectural firm…though it was now nearly expired. He couldn't possibly make use of it now…unless he wished to explain to a potential employer why a ninety-eight-year-old man was suddenly looking for work.

Considering the state of his own clothing, he thought that perhaps it may be time to consider obtaining a new legal persona…

But he could deal with that later.

Christine was half a block ahead of him, her body posture advertised her discomfort as she passed a stained, deflated camping tent, propped up with too few of its poles and a handful of used syringes and spilled food littering the sidewalk just outside its gaping entrance. She always carried herself in public as though she were trying to make herself appear smaller, and this truly was the worst neighborhood for a woman of slight stature to walk with such vulnerable posture. The girl was lucky she had a specter like Erik following her about the city.

The late afternoon sunlight made a halo of her golden hair which was still slightly damp from the shower. He had come to notice small details like that these past days, like the way her eyes crinkled when she faced the bright daylight or her preference for blue colored garments. It was as if she were a creature made from the day sky itself, a contrast to everything he had been.

And here he was, invisibly tethered as the night is to the day.

He followed her through the rough-edged neighborhood, past the sidewalk drug dealers and makeshift homes, past the street that marked the invisible boundary separating skid row from the rest of downtown. It was a stark contrast, a line of tents on one side of the street and a row of boutique shops and trendy restaurants with patrons enjoying the outside seating on the other. The city's downtown was a patchwork of social classes, each neighborhood occupying its own cozy little place. One could witness all the haves and have-nots with a short walk.

It was in this polished section of downtown that Christine reached her destination, a sleek little café. A young man was waiting outside for her, with light copper hair, an athletic build and classically handsome features on his unmasked face. Erik found that he was irritated by the man immediately. The two went in for a firm embrace and Erik stopped in his tracks and awkwardly observed the loving reunion from a short distance away.

"I have something for you," the man carefully said, reaching into his pocket to pull out an envelope. "I know you'll try not to take it, but I want you to have it. If anything, take it for your dad."

"Raoul…" Christine groaned, "I don't want your money."

"Take it, or I'll stop by your apartment and give it to your dad. He has more sense than you."

"Fine," she begrudgingly accepted the envelope, folding it and placing it into her bag.

It was at that moment that Erik made eye contact with the young man who had finally noticed the strange skeleton man staring at their interaction from several feet away.

Without breaking eye contact, the young man pulled a disposable mask from his pocket and began to place it over his mouth.

"Let's get inside and get some coffee," he said to Christine with a bit of urgency, his eyes regarding Erik warily. Christine had her back to Erik, but she turned to follow the young man's line of sight. Before her pale blue eyes could connect with Erik's, he had turned on his heel and began to briskly walk in the opposite direction.

He heard her ask the boy what he had been looking at.

"Just some creep," he replied.

No, Erik did not like that boy at all.


Hello readers!

I have not abandoned this tale. I've just been very busy caring for a newborn baby and getting very little time to myself.

This chapter is being sent into the world first draft style because I wanted to keep the story moving. I'm not sure if it is my finest writing, but it did feel good to get back to it.

Please leave feedback! I live for it.