Illusionistical

It is written that couples are made by the Grandfather’s hands; he who lives on the moon weaving families together with his red string. It is said that until their fates have been met and destinies completed, their strings will forever knot and twist; bend but never break. It is heard that to be tied is to have your souls connected, to live with each other throughout the ages.

They were a match made in Heaven, or rather, a match made by Heaven. What is made by Heaven can just as easily be destroyed by it. He knew it and so did she, or so he had thought. There were some things that he did not understand and she had promised that she would explain it to him in the next lifetime. How many had it been already? This world he had been reborn in did not seem right, the colors of this century hurt his eyes and the stench burned his nostrils; a land bathed in red and soaked in the gaseous fumes of gunpowder. This was not the peace and unity under one Kingdom that had been promised. When had this war broken out? He was now one of the highest ranking military officers in the Kingdom of Himmel and under his father’s nomination, headed the Personal Guards: the King’s assassination unit.

For how many years he had to have spent as a dung-beetle to have received this honor, he did not know. What did know was that his wife had been pregnant with his second child at the time of his passing. He did know that her stomach was pointy and not rounded, that he was supposed to have a son this time around – or so the midwives kept telling him. What had I been then? A farmer? He could not remember. He did however, remember when the lightening bolt came crashing down and washed his world with white. He would also never forget his twenty-third birthday in this world, when he first laid eyes on his wife again and this time, instead of the lightening bolt that took away his life, resounding through his mind was the explosion of his rifle that gave him back his old one. He had shot at his wife. Orders from the King to kill his own wife – no, orders to kill the one responsible for the King’s now botched assassination.
Read the rest of this entry »

The boy raised his hands to clutch at his executioner’s arms, arms that did not know the definition of mercy. Little did he know that the nerves in his body had long been restricted by millions of microscopic needles shot through him seconds before. He heard his own endless scream rise up and out of the room, traveling through the streets of his underworld prison, rising up towards the cloth-like sky that never gave way to darkness. Suddenly, the ground shook as if finally at its limit and the creaking walls of their wooden hut threatened to snap.

“Fuck! Did you miss again Kay, because I swear!”, Yan screamed, struggling to regain her balance.

“Hey, it’s perfect,” his executioner argued. “It’s not my fault his eyes are crooked.”

“My eyes are not crooked!” The boy piped in defense from behind the group, not realizing that he was no longer in the frozen body that was once his, tacked to the wall with a now invisible arrow.

“Then what was that just now?” Yan finally asked, her voice growing hoarser with each word.

The three women fell silent but only for a moment, as the wooden doors of the hut flew open and a tall, gangly man stood panting against the door frame. “He’s…he’s b-bback.”

“Why don’t you send him flowers for us,” Yan fired at the newcomer.

Confused, the boy hoped desperately to make eye contact with someone in the room. His body froze when his eyes met with Lia’s deep, dark brown eyes, eyes that he could tell were swelling with centuries worth of pain and regret, threatening to break through and drown the world in its ancient anger. In her eyes, he could see a pain similar to the one he often caught in his brother’s eyes, a pain he could only spot in the stolen glances across the floor at night while pretending to be asleep.

In a voice much lower and raspier than he heard come out of her before, Lia all but whispered, “With…?”

The man nodded and slunk to the ground, moaning and running his hands constantly through his ruffled blond hair with his head between is knees. “…now,” he hoarsely croaked, barely audible above the thunder that began to clap through the sky, answering a question that had not been asked.

The thatched roof above them began to fade and the boy could see that the sky he thought could never lose its shine, darkened to a shade darker than his own soot and coal stained world, only to be lit up by the occasional streaks of lightning. His feet began to warm as smoke began to rise from the ground, smoke that encased the room in relentless bouts of ash, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and other familiar fumes reeking of death. He watched as the walls around him began to distort but instantly became distracted by the sound of pounding gongs and a nasal song that rang and reverberated against the pitch black sky. The boy fell to the ground as if some force was pushing against him, pushing him closer to the almost near scorching floor.

“Quick, take him Amal,” he heard Lia swiftly order as she picked him up and threw him over to the man now struggling to raise himself from the ground. The thickened atmosphere prevented the four from hearing his weakened cries of confusion as they continued to run from the wooden hut with the boy thrown over the man’s shoulder. He to watched as the ground below him began to grow longer with each leaping stride the man took, and glow the glow of the rivers of magma that filled his childhood. How were they still standing?

They soon leaped over the threshold of a temple the boy felt himself being dumped and pushed into a dark, cramped room, perhaps the broom closet. He flinched in pain as the man gave his arm a hard squeeze before breathing into his ear, “Look, I don’t know who ya are but stay put, ya here?”

When he regained his strength, he desperately threw himself against the door and screamed to be let out. He had to know what was going on, he had to find our for himself because his brother was no longer there to keep him safe. He could not disappear without saying goodbye to his brother, he could not leave without knowing what had gone wrong. The boy stopped his frantic thrashing in the small three-by-three closet at the sound of blood-curdling screams that rose from outside. Following the bleak ray of light and smoke from a crack in the door, he peaked out to see true form of the inferno he had fallen into.

Through the hustle and bustle of bodies searching for a refuge that did not exist, the boy watched as each building burst into blue flames. He dearly wished what he saw had been the mirage it seemed to be, but he was in no desert and the agonizing screams he heard were too bloody to have come from his imagination. Burning, the city was burning and the people along with it. The boy now knew where he had fallen, Avici, the 18th level of Hell. From above, he heard a deep chuckle that echoed harmoniously with each additional cry of despair, three of which were sharper and clearer than the others that he heard.

No more than four feet away from his door lay his three captors, thrashing on the what looked to be the scalding ground, screaming through their clenched teeth. Geysers of fire burst from the ground around their curling bodies, as the man named Amal stood helplessly on the side, keeled over and shaking much like a opium-addict suffering from withdrawal. A body rolled closer in his direction, and the boy could tell it was the hazel-eyed girl despite her closed eyes, the one they had called Yan. Why am I not burning?, he thought as his hands flew to muffle his own cry while watching her body jerk and lurch forward onto her stomach, now noticing the searing red symbol that shone, or rather burned, on her upper back. The boy strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of a similar symbol burning the flesh of Lia’s left temple and Kay’s neck.

The burning went on for days, months on end; so long the boy slowly questioned his sanity in his not-so claustrophobic-friendly haven, so long that the boy stopped noticing the heavy cackle of the unknown voice that continued for as long as the burning did.

The face in the sky, now barely visible through the clouds of smoke, sounded its familiar alarm that almost could not be heard above the groaning, screaming and desperate pleas of guilt. 4:18.

Dark clouds began to fade and the buildings and roads returned to their regular state as if nothing had happened, and the people simply gave their bodies a shake, stretched and went about their day. All except for his three captors or saviors — which they were, the boy no longer knew. The boy threw himself against the door, which now opened with much more ease than it had before, and came to a tumbling stop next to Lia, whose body lacked the strength to even lift her eyelids. Her mouth dropped open and smoke came rising out.

“You….” she whispered.

An inch away from her face, the boy coughed at the deathly smell of the smoke rising into his nostrils. “Y-yeah?”

“What’s yer name, kid?” Amal asked, lifting him to his feet before pouring water into Lia’s mouth.

Silence. After being shot with an arrow beforehand, the boy had given up hope that these people would help him but a glance at the closet door told him otherwise. On the door was a yellow tag and some red calligraphy: a charm, a charm that had protected him from the same fate as every other soul during these torturous months.

“Ciro.”

–> Chapter 4

They had lived their whole lives for this day; he had waited ten grueling years of his life for this moment to come. He had done everything in his power not to get himself killed and now he stood before his brother in their rundown basement, burnt decades before his birth, with his left arm raised and knife pressed firmly against his wrist. He stared into the icy blue eyes of his brother, desperately wishing that he would give the signal so the heart inside him would stop its erratic beating.

“Stop shaking. Hold it steady,” his brother hoarsely whispered at him, who extended his right arm adjacent to his younger brother’s left. His brother pressed his own knife deeply into his own arm, “like mine.”

The boy never broke eye-contact with his older brother, but he could tell that his brother was scared too. He saw through his brother’s steady, unwavering facade each and every day of his life; he just never had the heart to mention it. We have every right to be scared. They were putting everything that meant anything into this. With their heart, their soul, and their memories on the line, they could not afford to fail and had everything to lose. This was the only way, the scriptures and the books that remained after the burning and shredding wrote of nothing else. This day, this hour, this minute, this second — this one moment could solve everything.
Read the rest of this entry »

Hell. He was in Hell.

“H-E-L-L.” the girl spelled out for him, her scratchy voice rising higher in pitch for each letter.

Great, he thought.This is fantastic. He flinched at the girl’s voice, giving an acknowledging grunt as he rose from the ground. He briefly raised his head to look at where the rip in the sky used to be and wondered how his brother had managed this one. As he bent to wipe the dirt off of his pants, he noticed that this high-spirited girl was no younger than he was. But no, she’s dead. So age wouldn’t matter. She’s probably hundreds of years older than me.

“It’s nice to see some new people around here.” she said calmly.

Pfft, sure, he told himself. “Hm..so where do I go from here? This is my first time being dead and all.”
Read the rest of this entry »

I have no idea how long this story will last, but it seems to be too long to still qualify as a short story. So I created a table of contents to keep track of all the so-called chapters.

1. Prologue: The Serene Darkness
2. Chapter 1: The Yellow Spring
3. Chapter 2: The Underworld Prison
4. Chapter 3: Chamber of Avici
5. Chapter 4: The Dark Mansion

Crash. Crumble. Thump.

Silence.

Crowds gathered around the strange little boy that had dropped out from the rip in the sky, now crouched at the center of the playground. Worried mothers poked and pried as fathers spread out in search of his parents or guardians. The boy curled himself into a ball and clenched his eyes shut. He could hear nothing but the explosion that reverberated in his small ears. His body shook and twitched with fear, unaware of the commotion he had created nor of the attention he received.

“Leave ‘im alone,” an old woman spat, staring down at the boy with her lazy eye. “He just got here after all.”

“Y’eah, they’re all like that,” her friend added with a cackle. “Y’all were like that s’well.”

“B..but they don’t u…usually come…this…way,” a frail young woman stuttered worriedly, obviously a newcomer as well.

The two old woman snorted and continued on their daily walk through the park as if nothing was wrong. Together, the two women were nearly two centuries old and they had seen enough in this world to sleep through a hurricane.
Read the rest of this entry »