‘What do you see in me?’
April 21st, 2000
Felix didn’t sleep. The notion simply did not come across his mind after the events of last night.
He has been standing outside of a particular room for the last five minutes, tea tray in hand. Sun is streaming onto the hallway’s floor from the open roof, a light breeze blows puffy white clouds across the late morning sky, and birds are chirping their summer song somewhere. Quaint, quiet, quixotic.
Erika hasn’t left this room since last night. She’s Marie’s elder sister or something like that, Felix has realized.
She arrived on scene soon after the incident was resolved, a glassy-eyed doll that emanated red-hot fury — Felix was a little too waterlogged to tell if he was hallucinating the ground shaking or not.
The flames dissipated moments after Gabriel threw the liquid nitrogen canister. There was an explosion, two distant thunderclaps, then nothing. Flames lost their colour, retreating to manageable red and orange flares. Half of the pier had collapsed, but not the side they were on.
“Holy shit,” Gabriel said, stumbling off of the bench he used as a launching platform. “We’re alive — we’re actually alive! Fuck yeah, dude!”
Adrian, on the other hand, was trembling, having slumped to his knees. “I want to go home,” he whimpered, hanging his head.
While his two companions were celebrating, Felix looked to the epicenter of the battle. The left side of that section of the pier had completely collapsed into the ocean, leaving behind only charred wood and the smell of ozone and ash. There was a fading blue light that sunk into the waves, fading by the second.
His watch did something. Numbers clicked. He saw the moment of impact, a single disjointed frame of a slide show. A sisterly embrace between two lonely girls, frozen in time. And then they fell, blown away by the winds of time.
Not too late. Felix took off his jacket, took a step back, stripped down, then dove after.
Black water met him. He sunk, following that fading blue ember, swimming even after it disappeared. His hand grasped something that was not much more than char and bone, but held onto it anyways.
Swim. Don’t look at her.
Upwards. Towards that distant moon.
Swim. Don’t look at her.
Swim. Don’t look at her. Don’t look at her. Don’t look at her.
He got up maybe halfway towards the surface when something grabbed him by the throat, arms, legs, and chest.
He flew. The night sky spun as he left the waters, the moon completing several rotations as he soared through the cold night. Then, suddenly they came, the stars winked out.
When he came to, he stared straight up into a familiar, blind-folded face. Sister Jules held a palm-sized cross to his chest, muttering a prayer in a language he didn’t understand. Father Kozlow was there too, looking grimly at the scene.
He had landed on another part of the pier, a section much closer to shore. Gabriel and Adrian were nearby, chatting with the priest about something. Far away, Erika leaning over Marie, performing first aid. He couldn’t really hear that well — although his mind was clear, everything was distant, muted, as though seen from the other side of a mirror.
Sister Jules whispered something then, a quiet confession that was most likely only meant for him.
“You shouldn’t try to change the future.”
He asked her what she meant by that, but she only patted him on the back with a smile. Then, hauling some massive spear-shaped tool, she left the group, her black robes fading into the night.
The rest of the night was a blur. Felix remembers bits and pieces; there was a stop at the church. Police sirens and fire trucks. A contingent from the local military. Another conversation with Gabriel and Adrian. Walking back to the manor.
He wandered the halls for a while. Didn’t really know what to do or think.
The lights were on in Marie’s room. He was pretty sure it was Marie’s room, at least. It was the only room in the west wing with the lights on.
He knew he couldn’t do much. Erika was in there, doing something important. So he figured he might do what he can, marched to the kitchen, and put on a pot of tea. He set it up fancy like how he saw Erika and Marie drinking before, all warmed milk and separate cute containers for sugar and spice and saucers for tea cups, then set it infront of the door. Knocked twice, got told to sod off nonverbally by scary shadow things, so he left it there. When he came back on his aimless walk, the platter was empty. So he did it again. Cleaned, rebrewed, delivered again.
That brings him back to right now: another tea stop for Erika. Felix hasn’t been keeping track, but this run puts him somewhere in the double digits.
He knocks again on Marie’s door. No response this time — he knocks a bit harder. Still no response. No wraiths or overpowering presence this time, which probably means a ‘come on in’ on the recently calculated Erika reaction scale.
The door opens soundlessly. He walks on his tiptoes, still-steaming teapot platter in hand, taking in the sights of the room.
When he was initially wandering, his mind constructed the various scenarios that went on behind the mysterious closed door. Was Erika performing a ritual in a grand bedroom? Would Marie be in a crystal chamber, slumbering until fully healed? Perhaps there would be a bubbling cauldron, a crystal ball, or maybe even a literal blood bath. His mind rampaged, blitzing through all sorts of scenarios. He didn’t know what to expect when he entered the room.
What he receives is a normal girl’s bedroom. It is a place detached from the rest of the manor, a room with faded teal wallpaper, a few posters of rock bands and foreign artists, a queen sized bed, a desk with a Macintosh, dingy-looking furniture. Beyond a large window to the north, a bright blue sky over a swirling ocean. Somehow, it is less impressive than the guest room he woke up in. This only makes it more surreal — like finding a personal computer in an ancient enchanted library.
Marie is tucked into her bed, wrapped in the gentle embrace of deep sleep. Rune-scribed bandages cover her arms and neck, and her chest slowly moves up and down — a sign of life.
The odd one out here is Erika, an intricate doll slumped in a chair by Marie’s bedside. Both her pale hands hold one of Marie’s; her head is tilted forward at an angle, eyes closed. Her expression occasionally twitches, seemingly locked in a cycle of calm, dread, and exasperation. A bad dream.
Felix places the platter on the nearby table, then gets to work. He takes a smaller platter with tea and sugar and milk, quietly pulls a chair beside Erika, and — against his better judgement — nudges her shoulder.
There is a second where Felix is pretty sure he is going to die: Erika snaps awake and catches his wrist before he can pull back, her slim fingers crushing his flesh and skin, threatening to flatten all the bones and muscles and nerves and marrow within. She regards him with an empty expression, glassy and artificial. A doll’s expression.
With a trembling hand, Felix offers the tea. Erika glances downwards at the shaking cup and loosens her grip; a weary look creases her green eyes as she lets him go.
“You really don’t know when to give up, do you?” she says, quietly.
“No. I suppose not,” he tries.
Erika begrudgingly accepts the cup, cradling it with both hands. She stares down into the deep orange liquid, takes a tentative sip, then lowers the cup to her lap. “This is a terrible, god-awful brew, human,” she says, wincing slightly.
“Ah. Sorry.” He tries to think of excuses as he rubs the feeling back into his wrist, but all of them are too lame to say out loud. Silence is the only option that doesn’t make him look like a jackass.
Thankfully, Erika is not concerned with Felix at all. She takes a deep breath and looks back at the sleeping Marie, not paying him a second glance.
As far as he can tell, Marie has been unresponsive after falling unconscious after last night. And judging by the memory of what her hand felt like, the fact that she’s still breathing and lying in her own bed is a miracle in and of itself. That alone is enough to put him at ease.
“Is she going to be alright?” Felix asks, just to break the silence between them.
“Of course she will,” Erika says, nearly huffing. “Our existences are extraordinarily compatible. Regenerating her body is child’s play, but…” A long pause. “Her soul needs some time to recover. She’s been through a lot. Might be back to her usual self by mid afternoon.” Then, a confused, annoyed look. “Wait, why do you care?”
“I really don’t think there’s an answer that could satisfy you.”
She gives him a sidelong glare. Then, after a few moments, a shrug. “A sharp tongue doesn’t suit a boy like you. But, point taken.” She takes another sip of his tea, winces, and lowers the cup.
Time passes. Marie doesn’t even stir — her body is still as a corpse. From the adjacent window, a faint breeze circulates through the room; a wind of salt, oversteeped Earl Grey tea, harsh ozone. Not for a moment does Erika avert her gaze from Marie’s sleeping face.
“You know,” Felix mutters, “she never stopped talking about you. Seemed to always be thinking about what she could do for you when we were out.”
“Is that so?” It’s a nonchalant response, but she tilts her head ever so slightly in his direction. “That’s to be expected.”
“Is it? I don’t really remember much, but the world of magic seems… harsh. I’m surprised you two have a relationship like that.”
Erika releases a sharp, amused breath through her nose. He hadn’t heard her breathe before — an exaggerated reaction, no doubt. “That makes two of us.”
The woman seems to no longer be directly hostile. He can probably speak without getting his head lopped off, impaled, stabbed, burnt, or any other methods of death being applied directly to his person.
The whole part with her calling him ‘human’ does bring a few things into question, though. Only a select few people tend to use that word as an addressor, and she doesn’t seem like a dragon or megalomaniac.
Felix nods, then looks up at her. “Can I ask a question?”
Another pause. A sip, and a resulting look of disgust. “Ask as you may, human.”
“Are you two sisters…?”
She turns to look at him, eyebrows raised, lips pulled back in a slight grin. A small chuckle works its way through her body, causing her shoulders to shake, an unfitting, breathless snicker to escape. A witch’s cackle.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“You’re an amusing one,” she sighs, crossing her arms, “I’ll give you that.”
“But that wasn’t… mrghn.”
Erika actively takes delight in his discomfort, smiling a sharp grin. Her eyes almost look the same as Marie’s, but there’s something behind them, a cold, calculating presence that stares straight through him.
There is no hiding anything from her. No point in even trying.
“But, no. We’re not sisters.” She taps her fingers on her arms to some unheard beat, breathing deep. “You could say that I’m her familiar, a creature bound to do her bidding. Of course, that’s not what happened — although there is a contract, she isn’t mature enough to take control.” A shrug. “But all of that is complicated garbage. She wanted us to be equals, so we are.”
The witch’s familiar, a common concept in popular culture. He expected something more along the lines of a cat or raven, but Erika is close enough to an actual person — minus the black tongue.
“Enough about me, though. Have you figured yourself out?”
Her gaze is directed at his watch — his first instinct is to cover it with his hand. He hasn’t given it much thought since his thoughts have seemingly normalized, but it’s still there, a constant reminder of the inconsistencies within the existence of ‘Felix Conti.’
An existence like her only needed a single glance to realize something he’s been struggling, avoiding, running, evading, hiding from all this time.
She revealed it with a silver disk that glinted like broken glass in the afternoon sun.
A battery.
A watch without power, still spilling the time.
Even now, his radio watch does not actually have a battery inside — Erika had long removed the supposed power source. Yet still, it reliably tells the local time, a declaration of 10:48:23 AM to this world.
This is, without a doubt, incriminating evidence. He’s not sure what crime is implicated here, but it can’t be anything good. Nothing good at all.
“I’m still working on it,” he says, looking away.
“Count yourself fortunate,” Erika follows. “I really was going to kill you, had she not taken a liking to you.”
“Ah. Thanks… I think.”
Another sullen, disappointed pause. A heavy flapping comes from outside — Felix turns his head, catching a glimpse of a black blur materializing on the windowsill. A plump raven hops forth two steps, then stares silently at Erika.
But the woman pays it no mind. She only looks down at her cup with a disapproving frown. “This is genuinely the worst thing I’ve ever had the displeasure of tasting. You are very fortunate that I don’t take off your head right now.” Her gaze grows sharp; the whites of her eyes, replaced with inky black. The shadows rise. “Maybe I should pluck your innards, or your tongue from your head mouth. Or maybe I could turn you into a lewd and boil you alive.”
“Then I’m really thankful that you haven’t.”
Felix scratches the back of his neck, smiling absentmindedly. Just like Marie, Erika had plenty of opportunities to kill him without Marie finding out — especially last night. She could’ve left him to drown, but she didn’t. That, to Felix, is worth more than any words she could hurl at him. And he can see where Marie inherited her witticisms and verbal tendencies from, now.
Erika comes to a realization of her own, slumping her shoulders ever so slightly. “You’re… really not scared of me, are you?”
“Should I be?”
“Of course you should!” She flaps her hand at him, scowling. “You kids these days, rotting out your brains with horror movies and all this sensationalist media. How are we supposed to compete? Vampires and werewolves used to be respected and feared, you know. When I was walking down the street the other day, people started throwing money at me and asked to take pictures, talking about gothic lolita — whatever that means. Absolutely no respect.”
She ends her sudden outburst with a click of her tongue and shake of her head, returning to a composed, dignified pose. Felix can’t suppress a small chuckle of surprise, a rumble that leaks deep from his chest. It builds up and up, spilling over into a full-blown laugh — the sound of another layer peeling back.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Erika says, barely suppressing a smile. “The damage is already done.”
Trying to not laugh too much at her expense, Felix exhales the last of his mirth and nods towards the observing raven. A different topic. “I’ve been wondering. What’s the deal with that raven? I don’t think it likes me very much…”
The raven senses that it’s been mentioned in conversation: it spreads its wings and caws loudly, an avian tantrum.
“Ah, right. Him.”
For a brief moment, human emotion fills Erika’s eyes as she looks towards the bird — a look full of disdain, annoyance, and exasperation. The raven stops cawing mid-squawk and flutters off in a puff.
“That little pest has been a pain in my ass for a century and some. It’s technically another familiar, but pitifully weak compared to me. Does nothing but mess up: he’s a useless bag of mana, feathers, and fat. Terrible creature.”
Felix relaxes back into his seat, eyeing Marie’s slumbering expression. He smiles — Erika carefully watches him, raising an eyebrow.
“Wait, why do you look so happy?”
“Well, it might be a bit selfish, but… I’m glad that I’m not the most useless here.”
“Is... that so?”
“Yeah.” He glances at the watch, then covers it with his other hand. “Honestly, I don’t really get anything that’s going on right now. I don’t understand magic, sorcery, familiars, the organizations — none of it at all. It might be a bit unreasonable to expect to learn everything in just a few days, but… this is fine too, isn’t it?”
“You know you’re being held hostage here, right? Either of us could kill you at any time. After this is over, we might end up silencing you anyways.” Erika is caught between a sneer and a gawk, voice fading to a whisper. “Does that really not bother you?”
A provocation, a promise, a reassurance, all in one. Felix simply does not have the tools to engage Erika in any sort of conversation; he does not have any intimacy, nor workable conversation topics that can be reasonably used. But what he does have is his honest thoughts: the empty-headed musings of somebody who barely exists.
“I’m actually… grateful. I may not know much about myself, magic, or… really, anything right now, but just hanging around you two makes me feel like things are going to be alright.” He rubs his neck, trying an uneasy smile. “After all, if you try hard enough… there’s nothing a witch can’t do, right?”
Erika stares at him for a long time. Her wide eyes are like frozen leaves, glistening with rain.
As much as he would like to, he can’t see what’s going on inside of her head. He is simply too different from both Marie and Erika to ever really relate to them — they are of different feathers, birds bound for contradictory destinations. But if that may be the case, then there’s no reason why they can’t fly together, even if for a little while.
Erika turns her head, brow furrowing in deep annoyance. “You’re so easy-going that it’s almost offensive. That’s impressive. Even after both of us tried to murder you, you can just sit here with a stupid smile on your face.”
“I guess I can.”
“You truly are hopeless.” Erika places the teacup on the platter and actively shoos him away with a flick of her wrist. “Instead of loitering around and making pointless native small talk, have lunch with the twins — don’t think I haven’t noticed you sneaking around.”
Felix raises his hands in resignation and backs away, trying a smile. “Can we chat more often?”
“Of course you can.” She scowls and raises her palm. Little blocks of shadow erupt from the ground as he steps back, not so gently suggesting that he leave. “Scram, already. Marie needs her rest.”
When he leaves, he finds himself a place that is not the hallway outside Marie’s room. He turns around and studies the weeping trails of light on the walls, quickly realizing that he has been instantaneously displaced to the front foyer. A few moments later, a little rift opens up before his eyes, spitting out a blue lantern into his hands. The lantern key.
She was kind enough to not throw him into a pit of acid or spikes, Felix notes. “Thank you!” he calls out, hoping his voice reaches the both of the Weisses. Then he raises the lantern, casting blue light upon the paths in front of him, and continues his wandering trip around the manor.
----------------------------------------
The world is dyed in white. As far as the eye can see, bitter cold and frosted over trees. An uncaring wind trickles from the overcast skies above, erasing all traces of life.
Such a place is not a land for the living, but a purgatory for the dead. How lucky of me to end up here.
I can’t recall how long I’ve been here, but sensation has long escaped my body. Perhaps a side effect of half-lucid dreaming or imagined hypothermia, my fingers have gone completely numb. But my eyes still work.
I recognize this forest. This was the place I grew up in, the expanse I had once gazed upon with starry eyes and bated breath. If only I knew how cold it would be outside those frosted windows.
The wind worsens. Snowdrifts curl across the forest, obscuring the view beyond the trees. I keep walking.
Footprints appear during my aimless journey. Tiny, fist-sized imprints. They go in circles, looping around the snow-covered trees, a nonsensical path. I follow them, merely because I don’t have anything else to follow.
I push past several frostbitten hanging branches and enter a wide cliff-side clearing — the place where the footsteps end. And, as though by magic, the skies clear: great clouds and winds dissipate to a faint breeze, leaving behind only a single inconsistency in the fresh snow drifts, countless waves of trees, sonorous valleys, and blue skies beyond the cliff.
Playing near the cliff is a young girl in a puffy white jacket.
She is building a snowman with wooly red gloves, a blissful smile on her slim cheeks. The girl couldn’t be any older than five or six, realistically speaking — and although the colour of her hair is hidden by a hood, she has bright, blue eyes.
I don’t recognize this girl. Whether a construct of my sleeping (or maybe dying) mind, a premonition, retrocognition, or some other arcane muckery, I have never seen this girl in my life. But regardless, my curiosity surpasses my cautiousness and surges past my lips in a call.
“Hey, kid. You out here all alone?”
The girl looks up at me. At first, her gaze is neural — eyes unfocused, mouth frowning, but she quickly animates with a child’s glee. Hands raised and eyes wide open, she lets out a yelp of happy surprise and rises to her knees. “Wow! There are other things out here? Would you like to play with me?”
Play. That word has many negative connotations when used in conjunction with anything remotely involving witches. I brace myself and glance away for a moment. “Depends what you mean by play.”
The girl only tilts her head, smile unfading. “This is the first time I’ve been able to play! Anything fun is play… I think!” She stammers at the end of her definition, staring at the shoddy snowman she built.
I’m not so stupid as to let my guard down in a dream. There is no such thing as meaningless dreams to people like me; some secret purpose drives this illusion forward. And since we’re embroiled in an indirect battle of mages, any clues help.
So I nod, putting on as kind of a smile as I can for this suspicious kid. “I’ve got some time to burn… I guess.”
“Yay! I always knew you’d be my friend!”
I pause at the strange statement. What is that supposed to mean?
Playtime is an arbitrary mix of running around, shoveling snow into piles, and lying around making snow angels. The girl seems to have no trouble keeping herself entertained — I barely have to do anything.
She rambles about herself as she’s playing, telling me all about her life. How she lives in a cool house, has a lot of books, spends a lot of time staring out the window. I feign interest with a few ‘that’s interesting’ and many sounds of approval, but the girl takes them as signs to keep talking.
“Look how cool this scarf is,” she says during her fifth snowman attempt. “My mommy made it for me! It even has a name on it!”
“That’s really, really interesting,” I say, staring into the snow. Out of the corner of my eye, I can faintly glimpse a name scrawled out in wool: SYBILLE.
Another name I’ve never seen before. Everything around me still has that plastic-y, too-bright sheen to it, reminding me that this is a dream. My mind is murky — can’t quite connect the wires in my head in the right way to form thoughts. But this name in particular breaks through the haze.
“Who’s name is that?” I ask, glancing at the girl.
“It’s my mommy’s name!” the girl answers, quite cheerfully. She covers her mouth with a long puff of grey-blue cotton, smiling with only her eyes. “Isn’t it such a cool name?”
“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty cool.” But what kind of mother would give their kid a scarf like that? You’d expect the mom to scrawl the kid’s name instead of her own. “Did she make one with your name on it?”
“Eh? What do you mean?”
The girl questions with such innocence, such wide-eyed confusion that it drives clockwork daggers into my chest. Strange grinding sensations appear as I continue to stare, almost as though to push me away from looking at her.
“Your name,” I ask, raising my voice. “Why didn’t she write your name?”
But the girl, once more, only tilted her head. “What name?”
A girl with no name. Something about that notion is terrifyingly familiar, but I can’t quite place my finger on it at this moment. And before I can press further, the girl breaks into a fit of sneezes.
“Uwah,” she mutters, rubbing her nose with her jacket’s sleeve. “I think I’m going to go home. Mommy hasn’t come yet — I’m getting cold…”
“Hold on a second,” I say, reaching out to her.
But as soon as my fingers reach the girl’s wrist, my hand phases straight through.
I reel back, staring at my clenched fist. When I look up mere seconds later, the girl is already happily prancing away.
“Wait. Wait! Kid, wait!” I lurch to my feet and take off after the girl, but she disappears past the first row of trees. I reach the same tree line moments later, but she’s already gone — the only thing left behind is a trail of footsteps in the snow.
For some reason, I run. I run as though my life, my mind, my soul depends on it. I’m not even sure what’s happening anymore — dread has consumed all my other senses, leaving only cold hunger. Ravenous consumption, hallowed satisfaction; the woods blur into an elongated, too-thin shadow as I chase after the shade of a girl.
Steel gates. Lightning that strikes twice. Burnt human flesh. A splash of warm blood, a taste of copper ash. A lingering shout.
I am standing over a woman in a dark kitchen. A bullet has pierced her cheek, burrowed through the midsection of her skull, and truncated the back of her head. Everything important to a living human being is spread around — streaks of strawberry jam on the walls, spilt memories on the ground. Her eyes bulge out of her head, little orbs streaked with red and green; her mouth slightly agape, crooked teeth flecked with red. There is a gun in her left hand.
My hand is on her wrist, forcing the barrel towards her face.
Behind me, the girl has completely blank eyes. There is a faint smile on her face, like she can’t believe what she is currently seeing — like this is a bad dream she will eventually wake up from. Yet, as the pervasive stench of blood and shit and piss and melting fat and burnt flesh settles in, the smile only grows wider. I watch the girl crawl over to the two corpses and nudge the bloody shoulders of a man and a woman, making some feeble, pitiful noise between laughing and crying.
Then she screams.
I realize something, staring at this familiar, yet distance scene. Something that should’ve been obvious from the first step.
These aren’t my memories.
They’re Erika’s.