The moon flickers through the thick canopy, glistening in the feeble moonlight. My hands are nimbly reloading a semi-automatic rifle, clicking the magazine into place. The air is heavy with acrid smoke, and I realize — as my body begins to assume the form of this memory — that there is no mechanical or electronic indicator that reads the density of the air. No — my lungs burn from the smoke, as my eyes struggle to focus in the darkness.

As my consciousness is subsumed by the rigidness of this memory, an excitement alights my mind, an excitement quickly buried by insurmountable hatred. The blur of sounds outside my corporeal being begin to sharpen, becoming the dutiful rustles of other soldiers in black-green camo, the shouts of superiors in the distance. I realize quickly that I’m at the edge of a military outpost; looking down upon my flat chest, I spot a multitude of medals, glittering dimly.

Commands, presumably from a higher-up, rush through my head:

* Lead Squadron 2X-C to point Beta, kill any unidentified personnel en route.

* Rendezvous with Squadrons 2X-A and 2X-B at Enemy Encampment.

* Identify and execute enemy VIPs

* Ekkehard Schmidt, enemy general

* Hermann Weber, enemy leader

* Attempt to Pacify without lethal force.

* Kill those that will not relent.

* Execute any that do not follow these commands, up to and including fellow Lieutenant Colonels.

The personality of my new body intermixes with my own, and he — the being of which I relive — stirs with utter distaste. He brings the rifle to his face, peering down the sights at the darkness between trees. Little eyes reflect the firelight from center camp. Insects and birds chirp and tweet; wildlife moans in the distance.

His mind is a rotten fortress: the stone-brick walls are mottled with self-hatred, torn through by spikes protruding from the core. Gaping holes are wrought where metal spikes pierce stone; were there a visitor, such as I, to this mental fortress, they could wander through the wall with little resistance. Should they wander through, peering into the core, they would find that the core has already eaten itself out, bleeding unto blackened ground as the heart’s been devoured by hatred.

Before I could dwell as to how a man could operate without a heart, without a goal, I hear a shout.

“Lieutenant Colonel, your presence is required at 0300 hours. Did you rest?” The words are stern, perfectly accentuated and precise in measure.

He who controls this body lets out a sigh before replying in a loathsome tone: “Yes, commandant. I will attend the slaughter when it’s time. Will you leave me be?”

“Lieutenant Colonel, it is imperative that you do not describe your actions as ‘slaughter;’ rather, you are liberating the people from a tyrannical force.”

“And what force would that be?”

“I do not need to repeat our mission objectives. You know what they are.”

The man spits on the dirt, grinning slightly. “Yeah, sure, bud.” Finally, he turns to face the speaker.

The commandant is standing sharply with arms crossed and a disappointed expression. His eyes are dark and his body impervious and wide. “What did you call me?”

Abruptly, he-who-controls-the-body stands up from the rock he was sitting upon, and he charges for the commandant’s face. Close enough that we can smell his aftershave, the man spits out his words.

“Yeah, sure, bud.”

Without flinching, as if he is but a fly to his might, the commandant replies: “If you were any lesser, I would beat your ass till it were blacker than the midnight sky.”

He laughs, a horrible and dark laugh it is, before replying in a loose string of hatred.

“But you won’t, will ya? My daddy wouldn’t like to see his little boy all bruised up before the big game, would he? Oh, noooo, he wouldn’t.” His lips curl in self-satisfaction, but the fortress of his mind shifts and crumbles.

He hates who he is, hates what he has to do.

“You’re drunk. You are needed in 30 minutes. Sober up, Lieutenant Colonel.”

“Oh, I’m not drunk. I’m fucking lucid as fuck, bud. Want me to kill some indigenous dredge? Sure, why not.”

The commandant turns and holds eye contact: this close, a distinguished fury threatens to burn our eyes back. But the commandant withholds his fury, for he smiles — just slightly. “Commander-in-Chief Agamemnon will be there. He will expect an excellent performance.”

That stalls him, several beats passing through the loud ambience of the jungle. He steps back from the commandant, and he contemplates his response before nodding, deciding on false-confidence and letting it grow ever-quickly. “Great. Will love to impress him.”

The commandant gives him a sharp glare but says nothing — and with nothing, he turns away and walks towards the camp. As we watch the glorified quartermaster, he seizes the shaking hand to his side.

Then, I feel my presence wholly ejected from the instance; as if eradicated from the bright and rigidity of memory, I feel my morphology becoming shapeless, incorporeal. I wonder, for a moment, of the importance of what I witnessed.

Was that man, the son of Agamemnon, me?

As soon as my body loses all traces of form and lucidity, I gaze upon the oblivion of which I reside, and I realize that it represents my memories. Before I had fractured and become this separable being, I would think my memories as a cabinet of collectible artifacts: exacting, retrievable, irreplaceable. At any moment, at any time, I could recall the exact specifics of any moment before the one I was experiencing, but I see that that was a mischaracterization. Even then, I would have to sacrifice the mundane moments between: the times I walked through the crossing streets of Atsalipoleis, when I was idle and waiting — when I lost time to my recollections, to my memories redrawing, whether willing or unwilling.

Within this state of unreality, I gaze upon an endless, shapeless ocean of fugue, disturbed only by islands of lucidity. These islands, while only a metaphor for the truly incomprehensible nothingness of my mental state, represent a solid recollection. Within this plane, I am subject to the tides and waves of the fugue, drifting as if upon a raft. I cling, with all matter of psyche, to that raft.

Who am I?

Where does the subject of me and him connect and end? Does it matter?

But I also remain above the islands and the ocean, as if from a bird’s view. And I see the endlessness of it, the vast distances between islands and continents, and I feel the need to cry.

With every memory, with every stark lucidity, I can recount it and retrieve it, even should it be weathered by the stirring ocean. But for what?

A dozen firearms cycle through my imaginary hands, hundreds of bodies bleed at my feet, thousands of regrets circle my mind. For what?

The constance of my existence had been evaporated, my body destroyed and rebuilt a thousand times. Every waking motivation, every moment of consciousness, it all churned with an inevitable continuation: I fought, in at least two lives, for what? To live?

As these thoughts recirculate and recirculate, the ocean whips me back and forth in violent dismay: as if spurned by a conscious hatred, the fugue threatens to drown me, to capsize my mind with regrets and deaths. Abruptly, my raft and self are cast back unto the island of his memories, the figments searing my skin.

In an instant, my incorporeality is seized and restrung across the bodice of his memories. As if choking on hot sand, I cough as he does, choking on smoke. His vision refocuses as burning flesh fills his nose, toned by a cutting copper scent — blood.

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The moon is lower in the dark sky, blinking between leaves as if the stars were its tears; deafening silence fills the thick air. Grizzled hands patter across our skin.

“Lieutenant! Lieutenant, can you hear me?”

The lieutenant shakes his head as he draws a deep breath. He looks upon himself and only sees blood, gruesome and dark. Off-handedly, he counts the bullets he’s fired.

Thirty-four bullets — each hunk of alloy smashed bones and tore flesh.

He counts the bodies at his feet as I look upon the shadowy details of their arrangements — none of them were wearing armor, nor were they in practical camo of any kind. In fact, there is no weapon in sight, save for those brandished by his soldiers. With each corpse, a churning sensation embroils my mind. This was no fight; this was slaughter.

Eighty-three corpses, he counts.

The spoken words become legible in focus: “Leave the lieutenant alone. He is gathering his senses.”

As he listens to his men defending his obvious shell-shock, he unlatches the combat knife strapped to his leg and cuts a series of symbols into his shoulder.

CMXVI

LXXXIII

Xoman numerals.

Too many, rebounds through his mind.

Calculations run through his mind, calculations that compute one final sum: nine-hundred-ninety-nine. With an ironic grin, he strikes through CMXVI and LXXXIII, writing a new numeral:

CMXCIX

Absently, he reaches for a locket and holds it tightly. Eventually, he rises with a bloodless certainty. Peering into the palace of his mind, it trembles as a sentry tower crumbles into nothingness.

He shouts at his men, rounding them up and moving forward, but the words are lost to time. Through the wet jungle, I feel his every sensation, mourn his every thought. Each a thought that aches with a self-hatred, threatening to immolate his ragged sense of self.

Through a thicket, a stride lands on polished marble: afore us, a grand hall flanked by armored men. Each step rings a dull clamor, echoing endlessly into the abyss-like hallways. Embedded within the walls are stained glass windows — a woman, tall and endless, bearing a shotgun of her flesh; a person, short and shapeless, holding the digital keys of death; a man, thin and hateful, caked in miserable false blood.

Behind each impression, each woman, person, and man: darkness. Pervading, ever-strong darkness. Yet, ahead, a girl with hair ablaze, clad in pristine purity, crying tears of stars.

Names fill my mind.

Zil, the woman aiming a shotgun.

Petal, the person reading cyberspace.

Viktor, strung in my own — in C’s — viscera.

And, of the girl whose skin unsullied by labor, incandescent in beauty: her name is Clara.

With each step, we stride for her. He shot thirty-four bullets. We have six left. Looking upon his rifle, it’s become a revolver; I unclasp the barrel, re-counting the slowly rotating rounds. As we reach her, the ground beneath quakes and breaks; marble made riven, sheltering cracks and ruin as it crumbles into oblivion.

Steps become bounds, bounds become leaps, and we shout for her, for what we are. The glass becomes alive, shifting into a thousand pictures of stories already told. The darkness, I realize, is the fugue, bashing at the glass with all its might.

As the distance to Clara shrinks, the quaking silences for a brief moment: a great distendence of time, stretching and widening as suddenly the fugue heaves through the glass, the imaginary panes exploding and splintering our bodice.

Back in his memories, we reach the village. The buildings are made of bamboo and straw one moment; the next, they’re made of stone and brick. The world, this farce reality, shudders in inconstance and impossibility. Smoke rises from the buildings — a bloody, terrible smoke that chokes out the moon, her glimmering starful tears dull and darkening.

Who am I?

He clasps the barrel of our revolver, and his men are failing to follow his quick pace. They shout for him to wait, to command them, but he abandons them all the same. No, he has grander aims.

His eyes scan for his father — Agamemnon, King of Men.

Screams ring unto the sky, but he cannot mourn their pain; he wants to, but he cannot. With all his might, his spoons were gold and silver; theirs, pewter and copper. No matter lofty his mind might be, he doesn’t truly feel their pain, understand the wounds he is culpable for. No, but he cries all the same. Solemn, lonely tears that travel hellward his mud-caked cheeks.

But he has no time. He lost all time.

Quickly, eagerly, his eyes scan the myriad atrocities afore him. Burning, blundered houses; bodies, alive and dead, cast asunder beneath the fiery alloy of his father’s army. Then, he finds him. With a callous gesture, his father, our father, commands the execution of several victims. Just as my predecessor’s men find him, he makes a mad dash for his father, letting loose a rabid, hyena-like cackle of a laugh.

Then, we’re in the crumbling grand hall, and we are but few spans from Clara. Her eyes are detailed now, wide and terrified of the monster that we have always been. The one she has made us, through her innocence, through her purity. It made us impure. It had to.

I had no choice.

Stepping into a blasted bamboo hut, he hides from his father, watching as he roughly commands his men, clad in red cloth and black armor. Who am I?

As Agamemnon coldly analyzes the village, his eyes drift over the smoldering hut in which we hide, and they linger. He-whose-memory-we-live smiles. He smiles before revealing himself. Our father sneers.

“Orestes,” his rich voice commands, “You have failed me.”

We scoff before spitting towards Agamemnon’s feet. “You were named Agamemnon when you declared war on the world. You name me Orestes when I show you contest?”

Our father crosses his arms as his men look to him. Stillness freezes the memory, for all we see is the muscle jumping in our father’s temple, the tensity that which his arms flex, the continuous of his breath heaving his chest. “You are Orestes, as revealed through your actions, as Virium had foreseen.”

Orestes shakes his head in denial: “No, I am not Orestes. You are not Agamemnon. Fuck Virium. They are not named after Xoman nomenclature — what if they are not Zues or Athena, just and true in their position; what if they are but Hades, dominion of death and underworldly dealings?”

The man declared as Agamemnon frowns. “You are no Priestess or Diviner. You harbor no connection to Virium, no just pedigree to deem Virium’s Xoman name. Silence, child Orestes, and asunder your rebellion and join your father’s raid against chaos.”

“No, you herald no ‘raid against chaos.’ These are civilians, victims of our unjust tirade, our unnecessary declaration of supremacy.”

“You make me laugh,” says Agamemnon, whose face betrays no humor. “You know, just as anyone would, that you are made for this. Your late sister made the ultimate sacrifice for us, Orestes. There is no turning back, no surrender to this filth.”

“You’re wrong,” we say too quickly, shuddering with a violent hatred that halts all manner of clear thinking. The grand hall within our mind has but shattered, fugue lancing forward from every shattered window. “My name is not Orestes. Yours is not Agamemnon. I am Aesilt; you are John.”

Abruptly, Agamemnon’s cool demeanor snaps, obliterated under the white hot rage that flares out in every step he takes towards his rebellious son. Trembling, not in fear, but in shimmering righteousness, we look up to our towering father and wonder just how grand his mighty fall will be.

“DO NOT BARE MY FALSE TITLE.”

Then, without hesitation, Agamemnon’s fist slams into our cheek. Caught unawares, we fall back into the mud, blood spilling from split skin unto earthen ground.

“You want to rot with them, son? You want to destroy yourself in your ridiculous parade of stupidity? Fine. Just don’t be surprised if you’re not accepted in Atsalipoleis when you attempt the long trek home.” With that, Agamemnon shouts a command to his men, spinning on his heel with a pristine sincerity.

“There won’t be a trek for you,” we mutter, standing from our lain position and righting our aiming arm. The hammer of the revolver makes for iron sights, holding the back of Agamemnon’s skull. One of the man shouts something indecipherable, and our father spins back: his eyes are widened by a sincere surprise.

“Son, who knew you’d attempt patricide, much less regicide.” The surprise softens but briefly. “I knew you could do it.”

We shake our head. “Just one more corpse,” says Orestes — says Aesilt — says Ceri.

In brief milliseconds, we pull the trigger: the barrel rotates as the hammer draws back and slams forward. The round combusts, microsecond flares spilling out as the bullet spins towards its hone destination. Yet, faster, Agamemnon, John, ducks before leaping forward. In moments slower, steel claws split his knuckles and lance for our flesh; tearing through, viscera spills forth, joining the droplets already spilt.

Finally, we reach Clara in the hall of our mind, but she evaporates into whisps as our hand clutches air, her laugh lost to the ruined hallway walls.

And as we fall to our knees, shedding tears of a black, blood-like substance, an unknowable rage rips forward and claims its own self.