A stranger’s deep, beautiful voice rose up inside his head. “Ethan. You look so tired, Ethan. Are you tired, Ethan?”
He was so tired.
“Do you want this to end, Ethan? Do you want me to take Billy away?”
He wanted relief. In whatever form it would come, he wanted it. He needed it.
“I can help you, Ethan. Do you want my help?”
Ethan looked at the girl’s face that still lingered above his own and saw the approval in her dark eyes. She said that it was okay. That it was okay for him to give in and go.
“Your soul, then, Ethan. A small price to pay for eternal peace.”
So it really was the devil that came for him now. Ethan had known it all along. This macabre confirmation renewed his fear and his buried survival instinct kicked in. To give away his soul to the devil himself?
Again Ethan looked at the girl. Her dark eyes were clouded by her tears for him and the fear she felt he felt.
“You can’t win, Ethan,” the girl whispered to him. “Stop fighting and let go. It will be easier that way. It will hurt less.”
When Ethan heard her words he gave up. He let go of everything that still lingered in the back of his broken mind. The sights he still wanted to see. The people he knew he would never meet. The music he wouldn’t be able to hear again.
His thoughts and his feelings belonged to the voice now.
“Then come with me, Ethan.”
Billy vanished from the room as a dark blue door appeared next to Ethan’s hospital bed. From it emanated the most beautiful blue light Ethan had ever seen.
He looked into the girl’s dark eyes one final time and wanted so very much to thank her for her last kindness. She had come to him in his darkest hour, and she had stayed. Now that he was ready to let go, she would see him pass the point of no return. It was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for him.
“No worries, Ethan.” Her voice shattered underneath her sadness. “I wanted to.”
The blue door opened and a current of warm air filled the hospital room. Then a pale man stepped out of the door and walked over to the hospital bed. He was the most beautiful thing Ethan had ever seen.
The pale man extended his hand as he said, “Let us go then, Ethan.”
Ethan’s spirit reached out for this strange visitor, passing through the restraints that kept his body down, unencumbered by the drugs coursing through his veins.
Together they walked toward the blue door that stood open for them. Ethan couldn’t see what was inside. Only an impenetrable darkness met his gaze. Perhaps this beautiful stranger was leading him into the void.
He followed his guide into the darkness and a humid warmth embraced him. Caressed the skin he no longer possessed with a careful touch.
The stranger was true to his word. Ethan could feel his pain and fear fall far from him, into the forgiving darkness. There his burdens would lie for all of eternity, no longer belonging to anybody.
Ethan was free now and, as he followed the pale man farther and farther into the humid void, he felt himself begin to disappear. First his thoughts faded, and then his most recent memories. Soon the void took from him all his emotions and the depths of his experiences that had shaped him into who he was. Or into who he had been.
The darkness deconstructed his identity and consumed him. Eventually, his nothingness expanded the void’s ever-increasing domain.
It was already dark outside when Gold stepped out of her store. The fledgling moon stood high in the sky, shrouded partially by a small, dark cloud. The stars greeted her with an indifferent twinkle, as if she should consider herself lucky that they acknowledged her presence at all.
The howling wind was fierce and blew her blonde curls into a chaotic mess. Gold thought it might rain later; her intuition told her so. The air was humid, and felt much warmer than it should have been during a windy October night.
He was here. Gold knew it. Prowling, stalking, hunting, same as he had done for centuries before now. The only thing she didn’t understand was how he had moved from the mighty oak all the way to this town. What had he attached himself to?
Gold had spent the entire afternoon cleaning her apartment and was happy to smell something other than the piercing scent of cleaning supplies. She wasn’t a natural at such domestic tasks and had bruised her body in the process, bumping into chairs and the pointy ends of her table. Still, the apartment had to be clean, had to smell fresh, because it was where she would regain her strength.
Gold’s mind was still hazy, and much of the almost two hundred years that had passed remained a foggy mystery to her.
Though her physical beauty had returned to her, when she looked at herself in the mirror she knew something was missing. Her aura, the intangible vibe around her body, was not at full strength. In her current state she could never aid her father in doing what had to be done.
She would have to hunt again. Only this time she couldn’t rely on the magic that surrounded her body. That mysterious appeal she had once had, enabling her to lure men without even so much as a word. Her eyes had always been enough, but they weren’t anymore. Not until she fed herself properly.
After Gold had cleaned the apartment she had gathered all her old granny clothes and taken them apart. From them she had made something a little more fitting for her current body and the task she had in mind. Tomorrow she would go shopping for better clothes, she promised herself. Clothes that would really flatter her tall and curvy body and make her ‘pop’ in all the right ways. For now she had to make do with the makeshift dress she sewed together. This was just a test to study the lay of the land, anyway.
What were men like now? Were they still strong and controlling? Were they still dangerous? Did they still consume the evil drink that made them mad as beasts? Gold wasn’t sure, and she felt a strange hint of excitement running down her spine as she crossed the street toward Ray’s Liquors.
Ray owned a gun, the sign in front of the bar said.
For a moment Gold wondered when she had learned to read and the thought gave her such pause that she stopped dead in her tracks. There were so many things she understood about her world without knowing where she had learned them. Were those lessons lost to the hands of time? Had only the knowledge itself remained? The idea that there were things inside her head that she couldn’t explain was somehow painful to the beautiful Gold. As if whatever agency she had as a person was taken from her by the fog inside her head.
If she didn’t know why she knew what she knew, could she claim any of it as her knowledge to begin with? What was she if she couldn’t take ownership of the things residing inside her very own head? Who was she, exactly?
She was Gold, and her job was to get back to her old self. To strengthen the magic lingering around her body and to be useful to her father. He wanted things from her and she wanted so very badly to give them to him.
Gold opened the door to Ray’s Liquors and the smell of booze mixed with sweat assaulted her delicate nose. Inside she found a depressing atmosphere, defined by the dark brown walls that barely contrasted with the slightly lighter tables and chairs. The only source of color came from the jukebox against the left wall but a sign on it said that it was out of commission.
As it was, the only sound came from a few drunks lamenting their miseries, and a small radio behind the bar playing a delicate jazz.