“After living one life after another, it starts to get boring, y’know?” She spoke in slurred, drunken speech, and he could barely make out what she said.
In his confusion as to why she spoke to him, he humored her. “How many have you lived?” He took a swig from his mug of ale and set it down on the bar.
“Oh, I’ve lost count! I think I gave up at 47 or something, but that was a looong time ago.” Her arms waved around her as she spoke, punctuating her statements. “I’ve never seen you in any of them though, so I guess you’re not that important a character.”
He blinked, adjusting his leather vest. “Character?” He inquired.
“Yeah, character. Every time I die, a new story starts. I get told what my role is at the beginning of any new life, and I have to play along with whatever the ‘plot’ is,” she explained, looking at him with more sincerity than he would have liked. “No one else remembers their past lives, though. The Scriptist likes to reuse characters because of that. I feel like I was told at one point how to get someone else to remember, but…” She trailed off, becoming lost in thought.
She doesn’t seem to be lying, he thought. And that’s the scary part. Past lives? Stories she has to live through? She appeared completely convinced these were true, even in a seemingly intoxicated state.
He took another drink of his ale. He looked away for but a moment; however, when he returned his gaze to where she had sat, she had vanished. Quickly jumping to his feet, his eyes scanned the tavern. He caught a minute glimpse of her amber hair bouncing through the door out into the street.
A strange impulse arrested his reason, and he ran after her. Carriages rode along the busy street past one another, barely looking out for any passersby. His eyes flitted around once more and located the odd woman again. He watched in shock and horror as she gleefully danced through the bustling road as if it were child’s play. His voice screamed, “Watch out,” as horses were headed straight for her at a rapid gallop.
She turned to see where the warning had come from; it was the one moment she halted her expert evasion of the passing vehicles. The carriage drew near at a pace that not even she could avoid.
It was too late to save her now, and her fate seemed sealed.
The moment she was trampled, the world froze. He saw her shadow soak the cobblestone scarlet. A feeling of dread trickled through his veins, and bile rose in his throat. Endless thoughts shot through his mind in those unfamiliar moments. Is she dead? She must be; no one could survive that. Does that mean a new “story” is going to begin for her? They all coalesced into one single notion: Am I going to die, too?
Head whipping around in a panicky gesture, he attempted to grasp the situation more clearly. The world still appeared to be intact, nothing had changed, and the only things that seemed to be unaffected by this pause in time were himself and the blood that flowed along the grooves between pieces of paved stone bathed in moonlight. A carriage impeded his view of the woman’s body, so he apprehensively stepped to his left into the street.
There she stood, akin to an undead apparition, hunched over with her head in a hand as red spilled freely from it. Shadows cast upon half of her from surrounding carts and window supports, the other half illuminated by firelight from nearby street lamps. The witness to this could no longer hold himself back from vomiting at the terrific sight. He had not only startled himself but also the person ahead of him.
“Eh?” She looked up with a regained composure. Tilting her head, the woman, coated in a brilliant hue of ruby, held herself with a certain poise. Her attitude failed to reflect her appearance; had she not had a waterfall of crimson cascading from a gash on her head, someone might assume she had simply tripped on a pebble. With a stretch, she yawned and wiped her brow. In an instant, the wound had vanished.
“Well, that’s one way to get sober,” she commented to no one in particular. “Too bad I’m still stuck with the headache.” Her attention then directed at the man that stood in front of her a few paces who was wiping his mouth. “What are you still doing here?”
He pointed at himself with a perplexed expression, to which she replied with a simple nod. “I don’t know… You’re the one that got hit by a carriage! Aren’t you the one who shouldn’t be here?!” His stress had bubbled over into a full panic, stumbling and heavy breathing included.
“Woah woah, calm down!” She rushed to steady him and received a gaze of horror. He saw that she was entirely unaffected by this whole event, perhaps only slightly confused by his presence. His mouth opened to ask for an explanation, but no words came out. “I am technically dead,” she said, answering the question he never asked.
“T-then how am I talking to you? Are we both dead?” He stuttered and grabbed a hold on her arm.
“It seems I managed to drag you into this loop, too.” The woman batted her eyelashes over her pale hazel irises; it was the only hint of an apology she offered. Grabbing him by the shoulders, she stood the young man up and grinned–an unnerving gesture. “I never caught your name!”
“I’m… Elliot. Elliot Yonderpass.” Elliot shrugged her surprisingly strong grip off of him, and she pulled her arms away. “Might I ask your name?”
“I don’t remember it!” Her voice was full of jollity. As she held out her blood-stained hand, she remarked, “It’s nice to meet you, Elliot!”
He only stared at her hand, holding back a gag. She peered to where his attention was directed, realized his reaction, and wiped her palm on her blood-soaked pants. It did nothing to remove the red discoloration painted on her skin.
Elliot chose to ignore the handshake offer altogether, instead glancing around at the setting they found themselves in. At first, he concluded that nothing had changed until he observed the sky. The nameless lady slid over to stand next to Elliot and followed his eyes into the heavens.
“You’ve probably figured out that everything is frozen, right?” She said, elbowing him.
“Yes… but the moon has moved,” he replied. “It was midnight when we came outside, but it’s begun to set.”
“Oh, that? I got bored of walking around without anything changing, so I managed to convince the Scriptist to at least let the sun and moon continue to rise and set.” With a curt nod, hands on her hips, she swiveled on her heels. “Now, come on! We’ve got a long way to go.”
“‘Go’? Where could we possibly be headed?” Elliot turned to her in confusion. “And who is this ‘Scriptist’? You’ve mentioned them twice now.”
“I’ll explain later! Get a move on!” She began to trot away, leaving him completely flabbergasted and lost for words. His mouth gaped for a moment before he sighed in resignation. Dragging his feet, Elliot trailed behind as his newfound companion cheerily, and disconcertingly, skipped off in a random direction.
The path through the forest was speckled with dots of light sifted through a net of leaves that laid unmoving. Neither tired nor hungry nor thirsty, the two travelers trekked through the wilderness. There was no sound beyond their own breathing, clothes brushing, and feet stepping.
Elliot had managed to pry more information out of the strange person he had fatefully been trapped with–or, from his perspective, trapped by. While not much more than his initial conclusions, he had learned their heading: a place known simply as Destination. It resided in the center of the continent–around a hundred miles from the tavern that had started from–and served as their ticket to their next life. Elliot struggled to wrap his head around the idea that the world he grew up in, and was just living in comfortably mere days ago, had abruptly come to an end with the death of a stranger.
In this void between existence and demise, time applied differently to each entity. For the woman and Elliot, it kept them from feeling fatigue and any basic needs; otherwise, the world was still, and only the sun, moon, and anything the sole survivors touched–up until they no longer were in contact–were impacted or aware of the abrupted flow of everything that existed in the realm.
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It was only once in a while that they actually spoke to one another; Elliot was simply trying his best to process the whole situation and his coppery-haired compatriot appeared to find no use in conversing with him. He had noticed that she would always take a few moments before answering anything he said to begin a discussion as if her mind required a start up, like a cat that needed to stretch after a nap. When asked what she spent all that time thinking about, she replied, "Nothing, really."
Somehow, Elliot believed it.
He found himself coming to the realization that for some odd reason, he could not help but believe it–all the things she said. No matter how strange, ridiculous, or utterly absurd, her words almost had a charming, captivating quality when she articulated them. Also, her eyes–they were a glazed hazel with edges of green, and as he looked upon them, there was a vexing nature to them that he could not pinpoint, which vexed him in turn.
On and on they walked in the silence that enveloped them, a silence that slowly but surely became unbearable. It was not until someone spoke up that they finally broke the monotony of the past few hours since the last time one of the two had a remark to present.
“I finally remembered!”
Elliot turned to look at his partner to see she had not done the same in his direction. She merely stared on down the path that now opened into a field. “What did you remember?” He inquired, following her gaze into the emptiness.
“Why you’re here too!” She wore a grin when Elliot, in surprise, whipped his head to her.
“Really?” He asked, both eager and unsure in wanting the answer. “So, how did I end up like this?”
She spoke very methodically and deliberately as she said, “I told you about the existence of the stories, and then you believed me.” Her head finally turned to him as she pried her eyes from the grass ahead. It only lasted a couple unsettling seconds, however, as she quickly resumed her staring off into the distance and shrugged, commenting, “Why you would believe the ramblings of a drunk woman who randomly started spewing nonsense at the unsuspecting stranger that is yourself is beyond me.”
Elliot halted in his tracks. His eyes blinked; his mind blanked; his heart sank. “So… what you’re saying is that… just because I believed you, I’m stuck here?” He took in a sharp inhale of air.
The amber-haired woman gave no reply, only shifting her bangs out of her face with the back of her fingers. Her skin was still stained in maroon; she never stopped to wash anything off, not her clothes, not her hair, not anything. While Elliot struggled to wrap his brain around the logic of his entrapment, she walked on.
And he merely followed along. On and on and on.
That was, until they finally arrived at the end of their journey and the start of the next: Destination.
Before them stood a massive tree with branches that stretched out a couple hundred feet in all directions. Long strings of moss and vines hung limply; curiously, they appeared to move of their own accord as there was no breeze to shift them. Roots the size of small houses grew and wove through the soil from their base. The bottom of the trunk held itself up a good fifty feet above the ground.
As they approached, a massive sign could be spotted with lettering that read D∙E∙S∙T∙I∙N∙A∙T∙I∙O∙N carved into it with unnatural precision. Their eyes had to adjust to the dense shadow that flooded the space beneath the wooden location marker, but once they did, a hollow, cavernous grotto could be seen. Lichen decorated the pillars holding the space open, and a stony path softly meandered down the center between them. At the end of the trail, the ground raised into a platform that went up to their waists; atop it laid two quiet rocking chairs dressed in foliage. They looked empty and elderly as if they had lost all their liveliness when their owners went away so long ago.
In a soft voice as to not damage the veil of serenity, Elliot’s companion said, “How quaint.” She stepped along the footpath and ran her fingertips along the pillars as she passed them. Elliot drifted behind her, taking in the peaceful atmosphere.
He was taken from his calm state when he heard the crunching of dirt and leaves. He saw a pair of blood-soaked shoes standing on the platform and an outstretched hand. His partner’s head tilted, indicating she would help him up, and he took the offer. Once they were both up, they peered at the seats that sat there.
“Do we just sit down?” Elliot asked, touching an armrest gingerly.
“Yes,” he heard faintly in reply.
And they both took their rightful places. The plants grew to envelop them, an exhaustion sweeping over them. After days of feeling nothing, they could finally sleep.
Chhhhhhhhhhh. Chhhh. Chhhhhh.
Elliot awoke to an obnoxiously loud and piercing noise. He blinked his eyelids over his warm gray eyes in an effort to chase away the sleepiness that had overwhelmed him what felt like mere moments ago. The room he found himself was not the cave of Destination–far from it, in fact. Everything looked odd and out of place; he did not recognize anything that would have been from his own world.
Colorful sofas with vertical white stripes down the center of the backs faced rectangular metallic tables. The windows had coverings made of many horizontal pieces held together by strings threaded through either end of each. On the other side of the room was a tall counter that stretched from one wall, where a small gate sat to get behind it, to nearly the other wall; stools with similar patterning to the benches were lined up along it.
CHHHHHHHH!
The sound, much louder than it had initially been, startled Elliot, making him search for the source. There was a man settled into one of the tables with its pair of benches on opposite sides. From behind the man Elliot could see he wore some sort of suit and an interesting hat. Turning slightly to the left, the stranger held a tall glass with a short stem and thick base, and he seemed to be drinking what few drops were left at the bottom through a hollow, cylindrical, bright yellow stick.
As familiar amber locks passed him, Elliot felt a hand smack the back of his head. He cried out and asked why she did that, which she merely addressed with a shrug, not even bothering to look at him. His fellow traveler sat herself down across from the mysterious man, waving Elliot over to do the same.
“I see you still have that tacky fedora,” she started as she pointed at the peculiar hat that sat upon the peculiar gentleman’s head. Elliot slid onto the bench next to her. He saw that this person continued to look more odd the more Elliot studied him; he could now see his ears, which were slightly pointed at the tips, and that he wore a strange pair of glasses with lenses tinted in dark brown and two wires going over the bridge of his nose.
The man held his mouth agape for a moment in exaggerated disgust. “It’s far from tacky! I find it to be quite dashing!” He argued and adjusted his hat with a huff. Then, he grinned in Elliot’s direction, sending a similarly perturbing feeling through him not unlike the way his companion’s smile did on occasion. “Would you care to introduce your new friend, Kirsche?” The unusual person slid his glass to the side and set his elbows on the table, chin in his hands.
Kirsche? I wonder if that’s her name; although, she did say she didn’t remember it, and she seems to be fairly acquainted with this person. I’d imagine he’s said her own name to her at least once in a while. Elliot pondered.
“This is Elliot,” she replied, holding her palm up.
“Well–” the gentleman slid his spectacles down his nose a tad–”it’s nice to meet you, Elliot. You can call me whatever you like, although I’m often referred to as the Scriptist.” Elliot felt a cold chill drip down his spine as he looked at him. Now that there was nothing covering the man’s eyes, he could see that he had none to speak of–eyes, that is. No eyes, no sockets, nothing except for slightly concave dents that traveled from his brow ridge to his cheeks.
As quickly as they came down, the glasses went up again with the push of a finger. The Scriptist’s attention returned to “Kirsche,” leaning into the white striped cushion behind his back. In an ecstatic voice, he said, “Are you excited for your next adventure? I’m particularly proud of this one!”
“That’s never a good sign,” the young woman scoffed.
“Come now, don’t be like that,” he dismissed with a wave of his hand. “Besides, now you’ll have a friend with you!” Elliot shrunk slightly in response to being referred to.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever. It’s not like that turned out well last time,” his comrade stated as she turned her head away from both of them and crossed her arms. The Scriptist frowned; he did not appear upset, rather, it seemed to be an expression of pity and sympathy.
Elliot had so many unanswered questions about them, this place they found themselves in, and the place they would soon find themselves in; however, he held his tongue. If I’m not going to find out along the way, I don’t think I want to know–whether it be their secrets or anything else, he resolved.
With a clap of his hands, the Scriptist broke the awkward silence. He smiled a spirited smile as he announced, “Now then, I think it’s best you both be on your way! You’ve got lots to do!”
“What exactly are we getting ourselves into with this next ‘story?’ At least, that’s where I’m assuming we’re going,” Elliot tensely asked. He worried about being completely unprepared for what was about to happen.
“Don’t worry,” the Scriptist replied and tilted his head, “you’ll figure it out!” With a final ominous nod accented by an alarming grin, he snapped his fingers as Elliot shouted for him to wait.