Alex

“What’s going on, Sara? What have you done? This is your doing somehow, I know it is.”

I laughed at what I was saying, saying out loud. She was not here anymore, not with me, not in the flesh anyway. But it was exactly the type of prank she would have played on me if she was here – send me a prince, a warrior, straight out of our stories, out of her dreams.

What the hell was going on? Who was this man David? Who was he really? Was he simply who he said he was, and his story all simply the truth? Or was he some madman that just somehow stumbled onto the name Carthia? No. I knew that was not the case.

I had looked at him, listened to him, seen that he told the truth, or at least that he himself believed that what he said was true.

And I couldn’t help myself – I believed him. It was insane, absolutely bloody insane. How could this be happening? A man is abducted, kept captive for years, eventually escapes, is forcefully returned after ten years, ten whole years, and then just somehow just bumps into someone who is not only an exact double for the woman who sent him back, but she just also happens to be the sister of a girl who wrote stories about a woman with the very same distinctive name as the woman who sent him back home – “A’l mara de dwa por la deva Carthia,”, You are a twin for the woman Carthia, he’d said when I’d asked him about the language spoken on the world that he claimed to have been taken to.

No way could it be a coincidence. Some kind of a con perhaps, a prank or something. Either that or it was all true, and if it was all true, then what the hell was going on?

“Come on, Sarah. Give me a clue. You were the dreamer, the stories were yours really, I just filled the gaps. What’s this all about?”

And then she answered me, as she always did, as I knew she would. Oh, my logical self, the logical self that the world saw, knew that it was not really her, that it was my own doing. But deep down lived the romantic, the dreamer, the one that missed Sarah so very much, the one that prayed with all her heart that it was truly her that spoke.

“It’s in the book, Alex.” It was my voice, spoken aloud, but what I heard was Sarah, her voice still that of a young seventeen year old girl with all her life before her. Anyone who listened in would truly think me mad. You’ve got nothing to worry about David, nothing at all. “Everything you need to know is there. It will keep you safe, Alex. Read it again. You will understand when the time comes.”

My logical mind processed her words before I could reply. What part of my mind had that come from? Why had I said that? But then the logical was overwhelmed by my soaring hope. True, Sarah and I had spoken before, but this was different, this was not the aimless chatter of a lonely woman who so missed her sister, this was something else. Was this what I had spent all my days since her passing praying for? Was this truly Sarah?

“But I’ve read it over and over, Sarah. There’s no mention of a David. Yes, there’s an evil demon, a Dark One, but all stories have to have one of them. What’s in there, Sarah? What am I looking for? Give me a clue … Please!” The last, I realised, was almost pleading – was I really mad?

The silence stretched and stretched, and no reply came. All the while my mind raced. This was not normal either; our conversations sometimes went on for hours, and she always had an answer or a retort for me – I never got the last word. I waited and waited, but the only sound was my heart beating and the slow rhythmic intake and exhalation of my breathing. Half an hour I waited, and still nothing.

“Okay, you win. You always were the stubborn one. I’ll read the bloody book… again! Every page… every flaming word!” The words were harsh, but the tone light and cheerful. I loved that book, and any excuse to touch it, pick it up and read her words was always welcome. But this time it was not just to reminisce and return to my childhood and my sister. This time I had a purpose, a purpose set for me by my beloved Sarah.

###

David

It was our first get together after that really strange and fateful day that we met; although I don’t suppose you could really call it meeting – call it fate, the work of a divine being, whatever. But something had thrown us together, forced us both to be at that place, at that exact time. It was no coincidence. It could not be.

I had told Alex a great deal of my story that day, but it was all only an outline; no depth, no detail to it, just an overview of what had happened to me. And strange as it seemed to me now, I had expected her to believe the fantastic and ridiculous story that I had told her. Maybe it was the whole Carthia thing, perhaps because she looked so much like her, exactly like her, sounded like her even – perhaps it really was her, at least that’s what part of me kept saying. I just could not disassociate her from all that had happened to me. This woman, Alex, was somehow linked to me, linked to my life, and it was that which made me certain she would believe me once my story was told.

That day, as we sat and drank coffee, her outburst, the anger in her voice, had really taken the wind out of my sails. Until that point, nothing she said could have convinced me that she was not somehow the woman Carthia. But her anger was genuine, not feigned at all; it was all there plain to see in the way her face had contorted, and how her eyes almost bulged out of her head.

But there had been something else there too, a hint of confusion – something worried her, and that too had driven her anger. She had been as confused as I was.

Then, when she told me of her book and her sister’s heroine, Carthia, all thoughts that this might be just one huge coincidence were dashed away.

We were linked somehow – Alex, her book, the woman Carthia, and all that had happened to me, were somehow part of the same tale, the same story; a link somehow connecting two very different worlds. I knew then that I just had to see the book, read what it said, see if it held more about what had happened to me, more about Ellas than just the name Carthia.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Then she had dashed my hopes, and yet raised my spirits with a single sentence. I had laughed with her, my frustration at her refusal slowly ebbing away, as I realised I had found someone who would listen and not laugh, someone who would not think me mad. The book could wait.

We talked for hours more that day. I talked of Maggie, how she had taken my return and of our eventual breakup, and Alex had told me of her childhood and her sister. It was late when we both finally seemed to run out of things to say. Yet we still sat there for a long time, lost in our own thoughts, listening to what should have been an embarrassing silence; occasionally glancing at each other, eyes meeting, smiling and still saying nothing.

No it wasn’t embarrassing, that silence, it was something else; an understanding perhaps – Nothing else needs to be said, we are both content. Don’t say any more, don’t spoil this moment. It had been nice, those last few moments, strange but nice.

But, Alex could be so blunt. She’d interrupted that so pleasant silence by suddenly pushing her chair back, standing and saying, “Right, got to go,” and then she had marched away towards the door.

I was flabbergasted. It cannot end like this I had thought. There is so much more to be said, to be shared. I had stood, turned to follow her, began to protest.

“Got you,” she said. “You should see your face! I’ll phone you tomorrow, arrange to meet up. Don’t worry we’ll get to the bottom of this.” And with that she turned and was gone.

‘Got you,’ indeed, I could still bloody throttle her for that.

So here we were now, sat in Alex’s living room, facing each other. Alex in her armchair while I sat on the sofa opposite.

The silence was back, but not the comfortable silence we had shared just a day ago. This really was embarrassing, the embarrassing silence of best friends after a bitter argument, neither wanting to say the magical word sorry, but each so very desperately wanting to hear it. No, this was more than that even; this was the embarrassing silence of first time lovers at the breakfast table, both shy, afraid to speak and break the spell, afraid the other might not remember the night with the same passion – it really was that bad.

Finally Alex, blunt as ever, jumped in. “So how did you feel then? How did you cope? Stay sane, I mean. You know, when you were taken. Apart from your story, you seem sane enough now, well adjusted, normal even. But back then, surely it must have driven you close to madness.”

My first thought was how much I already missed that embarrassing silence, how I would have it back in an instant, rather than remember my thoughts from those times, when every thought was either filled with terror or madness. No one else had asked how I had taken it all, how it had affected me and how I had felt?

Maggie and Tony had been too caught up in the story itself, trying to prove to me how really ill I was. And my mother, I suppose, could see that I was fine, at least, as fine as anyone could be after such an ordeal, and had wanted to leave well alone.

But the question was out there now, hovering in the silence waiting for an answer.

I coughed and cleared my throat before I spoke, “You really don’t take prisoners do you, Alex? Any chance of a coffee while I get my thoughts together so that I can try and explain it in a way that makes sense? Since my return, I’ve spent all of my time trying to either convince people of the truth of my story, or lying through my teeth trying to hide it from them. It has been real to me for a very long time now, it's been my life, my reality. Yet my thoughts from back then, my insanity if you like, is something that I’ve avoided going back to.”

We bantered back and forth about how I didn’t really need to talk about it and so on. But eventually Alex went to make coffee and something to eat, and my mind wandered back to that time I had been presented to him.

***

“Take him away, prepare him for what is to come,” he said.

And prepare me they did, but for what I did not then know. Now, I know that the beatings, the torture and pain were but the preparation for the endless pain that was to follow.

Day after day, week after week of brutal beatings, merely to prepare my mind for what was to come.

After a beating, I would be thrown, body bruised and broken, into my cell, alone in the darkness with only the silence and pain for companionship.

Sleep would not come for he had already deprived me of that blessed mercy.

I was required to feel all the pain, have no escape from it, live with it, and accept it as being part of my life. All preparation for the far, far worse pain that he would use to forge me anew into his creation, all preparation to ensure that my mind would survive intact to control that creation.

But I did not know that then – the beatings, the pain, the fear and the terror had no meaning for me; they had no purpose, no end point, just endless pain.

My torturers asked no questions, gave no quarter, their only goal was the relentless pursuit of my screams.

And screams I gave them aplenty. I cried, begged, pleaded, and screamed. Yet gained only their scorn and laughter. I did go mad – I’m sure I must have, anyone would have. How long it lasted I do not know, weeks at the very least.

Those times alone in the dark, they too played their part. The beatings taught me pain; the dark and the silence taught me terror, conditioned me, drove my conscious thinking mind far, far away, leaving only the shell to control the body that remained.

They would then leave me like that and wait patiently for my return, wait for the part of me that would again scream for them and give them pleasure.

And I would return. Slowly my mind would peek out into the darkness that had become my world.

Oh, it knew everything, felt everything, all that had happened in its absence. But time passes more quickly, and the suffering seems more bearable when the body is but an empty shell. But come back I would, and they would wait, wait patiently for their plaything to return.

On many such occasions, between my return and their coming, I questioned my sanity. Asked why me? Was it all a dream? Why could I not wake? What did they want? I would review all that had happened to me, look for the flaws in what I saw, look for that which would prove it all a dream, prove it to be my madness, anything that would make it not real.

For if it was now my true reality, there could be no end to it, no return to normality, no return to my safe and secure life.

I cried, I screamed, I beat my fists bloody against the rough stone walls, all in an attempt to wake from my living nightmare.

But time slowly taught me that my screams only woke my tormentors, alerted them to my return, and then the cycle of pain and terror would start anew.

So I learned to just lie there on the cold, damp floor, afraid to move, afraid to show any signs of conscious thought. Alone with my my madness.

More and more I used those lucid moments to take pleasure from the memories that had been my normal life, the life I had lost.

I thought of Maggie, of Tony, my mother, of all the good times. And I thought, too, of all the little, hurtful, neglectful things I had done during my life; regretting them all and wishing for a chance to redeem myself.

Those times alone with my memories, with my inner self, soon became all I had, everything else was darkness and pain. Was I mad? Yes, I was sure of it. I was mad and there was no cure – I was sure of that, too.

***

Alex returned with steaming mugs of coffee. “Sandwiches to follow,” she said with a wide grin on her face, which quickly dropped into a frown as she saw my face.

“What’s wrong? You look terrible, like you’ve seen a ghost!”

She sat next to me, coffees on the table in front of us, and I told her all of it, all of my memories, my thoughts and my terrors from those days of my preparation.