What had driven her back here?
Leah wondered again as she stared out from her balcony, into the night sky, with a silver goblet of warmed bison blood in hand and Mozart’s Lacrimosa growing in tempo in the backdrop. Something about the weight and finality of this classical piece had been moving to her speed lately.
Pandemonium stood as it always had in front, a chaos only loosely bound. Asphodel overflowed with its ever-shifting deluge of neon lights and commerce. Tartarus sprawled out in its shadow, its denizens barely visible as they scurried from one alley to the next. Mother’s Grace glowed in a veneer of protection, while Elysium stood as a beacon of sin. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had, for with each passing month, more buildings would get toppled or erected depending on the whims of the city. Like the rest of her undead race, Pandemonium lived as an extemporaneous, myopic organism, seldom staying still for more than a few days lest the Hollowing reduce its form to nothing. But despite the city’s frequent changes, it always found a way to enter the same loops. Forward, backward, and nowhere. All at the same time.
Leah took a sip from her goblet. She had once considered abandoning this place for good. Just drive off into the sunset and not think about what would come next. So long as she was willing to embrace her own mortality, who cared where it would go.
And yet, she had found herself back at Pandemonium in the end. Her responsibilities had only grown since her exodus, and now, it was hard to remember how things had ever been different. Just shy of three years came and went since she’d fled this place with Liam. Three long years since she’d been trapped in a war between Hades and Mother that left them both dead, along with all her other friends. Three long years since that bloody mission over survival.
The one that left Leah alone in the end.
Her sight fell below. Not just me who’s alone, I guess.
A guy hung around the boundary between Asphodel and Tartarus, shouting atop a plywood box. Where the rest of the area could be defined as a sea of shadowed silhouettes drifting about, the light hit this one’s brown cloak at just the right angle to make him pop. A bulwark obstinately standing against the storm.
Leah knew his deal. She had driven by him a couple times now. The guy spent every day begging anyone else to read a book he’d found. He was so desperate for shared attention that he hadn’t left that plywood box for weeks and kept insisting that he didn’t need to eat brains so long as he had his book on hand. Everyone else just kept walking by, barely paying him mind.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
It was pathetic to see, but as Leah watched the guy in the brown cloak, she wondered how different her circumstances were. Here she stood, at the top of her castle, with nothing more to give her company but endless luxury and the harsh melody of a dead man’s tune. She had her own plywood box, just bigger and brighter. No one else was here.
She pulled her bellflower out, its lilac petals a stark contradiction to the darkness of the world beyond. The light spilling out from her room formed a sheen across its reflective surface, reminding her that this was a mere replica of what she’d once had, given to her by Liam when at her lowest. The first had long since rotted away, and this replacement was a bitch to come by, but she’d finally found one that matched her memory and encased it in plastic. Now that moment would forever be captured inside its artificial petals. Could she say the same?
Leah stared deep, examining every nuance of the bellflower. There was something else here that she had never been able to see. A power hidden inside this memento. What was it that made her always so drawn?
Socrates was right. Her life could be defined by this isolation. Death was a foregone conclusion behind these walls, and Leah never had to feel vulnerable again, so long as she chose to remain right in the heart of her race’s capital, with all the bodies and protection to boot. There was no better place in this world to spend the rest of her days.
But still, that could never be enough by itself, for in spite of having so many others around, she’d never felt more alone than now. What the hell was she missing?
Leah thought of Liam again. About his new family and the shape their lives would be in. She closed her eyes and tried to will his image to the front of her mind.
All for nothing. It had been too long since they’d seen each other, so all that came to mind was a mix of greys and beige surrounded by unkempt hair. Even hollows were more recognizable compared to the specter in her mind.
Leah swallowed the last of her blood, set the goblet on the marble nightstand beside, then clasped her black-gloved hands onto the railing.
To think that this was supposed to have been a happily-ever-after ending for the two of them. Give me a break. Life never was so simple. Leah could see that now. It never ended until it did for good.
Her sight fell on the guy in the brown cloak one last time. He still shouted from atop his box, even as his mind continued to empty out. Like the rest of their cursed race, the Hollowing pressed on without mercy, and would never be satisfied until there were no rezzers left.
Leah wrapped her scarf back around her face and stepped inside. On her own or surrounded by an army of her kindred, it did not matter. The forces of the world might try to steal her soul, but she would continue to fight for her life until the bitter end and then some.
No matter what.