Chapter 77

Ashes to Light (II)

Asher stared emptily at the tips of the blades that were the skyscrapers, dotting Washington’s skyline. It was a city of promise as much as it was a city of apathy; it was within these streets, these hallowed halls, and these voiceless parks that the last of his human self died. No, rather, he was forced to kill it in order to move on with life.

As he walked the distantly familiar boulevards of a home forgotten, specters stirred from the shadows. They were all the same, weak and malleable, hardly dangerous enough as a distraction.

He took a stroll down the Georgetown Waterfront, a somewhat hazy string of memories awakening within him. More than once or twice, he’d jog early in the chilly mornings, enjoying the sights along the route. However, he’d realized something strange immediately--though it was clearly the city he knew, it also... wasn’t. Any time he’d focus on any one particular building, he couldn’t really make out what it was.

Everything seemed vague and abstract, a concept of a city more so than an actual depiction. And yet, it was enough to stir his memories, and, bit by bit, he began to drift through his favorite spots while the specters continued to strike from the shadows.

Eastern Market, Rock Creek Park, the Smithsonian, the National Mall with its ever-piercing monument... it felt like home, yet not at the same time.

He came in front of the Lincoln Memorial, down at the bottom of the steps. In all his years of living in the city, he’d never climbed the steps--he was always either too busy or tired or too distracted with life. Chuckling, he shook his head and left. It was pointless, all of this.

The trip down the memory lane felt... hollow. Perhaps that was the difficulty of the stage--not the specters themselves, but rather the memories they were made out of. Perhaps those attached to the lasting, sweet remembrances might yet have found themselves mentally caged and broken.

Asher, however, did not have that attachment--he'd severed them all, culling whatever had ever mattered to him. Walking the streets of both his childhood home and the city in which he spent his twenties felt rather boring. If the desire was to elicit trauma, there were certainly better ways and places--the first time he'd killed someone, truly killed someone and not by accident, the first time he'd nearly been killed, that time he spent four weeks adrift on the sea inside a small boat, or hundreds of other times when he found himself in a gunfight or a race for his life.

Even if they were coming, and even if this was just a chronological ‘movie ‘of his life, now that he knew... he was prepared.

As if ‘they’ heard, the world suddenly began to contort and twist. Specters ceased appearing and the buildings began to melt like candlewax, boiling beneath the scorching sun. The bubbling wax soon churned and like molded plasticine began to take distinct shapes. It didn’t take Asher long to recognize where exactly he was.

While the sprawl of Brussels--similarly abstract like D.C.--took the breathtaking stage of humbling awe, a tiny cafe nestled between a butcher shop and a candy store became his focus. There, beneath a colorful parasol, Hannah was reading newspapers.

His heart stirred for a moment before calming down--perhaps there was a reason why certain depictions of things were vague, like the whole cities, and why some things were so... perfect.

Like her.

Her long, black hair lay lazily against her open shoulders and down her chest, while a pair of shapely sunglasses covered her ruby gems. She wore a sundress, something she loved doing while either undercover or on a vacation, and was barefoot, having set her sandals to the side. It was as though ‘they’ had a ‘snapshot’ of that day and recreated it perfectly.

No, they did have it.

It was in him, seared in the depths of his mind. He could never forget, no matter how much he tried. Every person has them, those few, fragmented memories that seem to be carved into the psyche. This was one of his, the day the two of them met.

He didn’t know she was on the job, and she didn’t know he was her job. Rather, he simply saw a beautiful woman, and being the brazen, youthful self, sat opposite of her without asking.

As though queued up, his silhouette formed from the shadows, and walked up, sitting down confidently. Hannah lowered her newspapers curiously and angled her glasses, inspecting him with a faint smile.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“You should,” Asher replied, taking off his sunglasses. “So, I came to remedy that.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Really?" she curled up the newspapers and set them down, facing him lithely. Every one of her movements was deliberate, calculated, and predetermined. "Ten words or less. Tell me, why are you more interesting than my leisurely rest beneath the Belgian skies?"

“I’m probably not,” he said. “Nobody knows the value of peaceful rest more than me.”

“That’s eleven,” she said. “Even being generous.”

“I am a bit of a rebel.”

“And I’m not sixteen.”

“... one drink,” he said, leaning over as well. “If you don’t find me interesting, I’ll walk away.”

“You can spare us both a few francs and just walk away now, you know?”

“Have you ever had one of those moments,” he quickly said. “When you look at someone and you realize there’s just... something about them?”

“No,” she said. “But a lot of men have had that moment with me, on account of me being hot and all. See? A clone of a clone, I’m afraid.”

“Nah, not that,” he shook his head. “I mean, yeah, you’re hot. That’s evident. But that wasn’t it.”

“It wasn’t? Wow. Alright, surprise me. Show me how you’re not shallow.”

“Your leg.” he said.

“My leg?” she arched her brows. “Yeah, definitely not shallow.”

“The tattoo,” he said. “Peace is despaired. I don’t know why you had it done in Sanskrit--to be quirky, weird, sentimental, or spiritual--but that’s Milton, right?”

“...” she paused, though just as back then, Asher saw the flicker of emotion in her lips. “Hm. Seems you’ve earned yourself a drink, hotshot.”

“Hotshot?”

“Yeah. You seem like a hotshot.”

“It’s actually Asher.”

“Hotshot just rolls off the tongue, no?”

“If you say so,” he chuckled. “Do you have a name or should I make one up for you, too?”

“... Hannah.”

“Well, Hannah. What would you like to drink?”

The world paused all of a sudden and the surrounding buildings began to distort, almost like graphical artifacts, contorting in unnatural ways. Their interiors became visible, bleeding over through the stone walls. In the midst of it all, however, what terrorized his heart the most was the sudden jerk of her head--Hannah’s neck snapped unnaturally to the side and she faced him. Not the past him from the memory, but him of today, of now.

She no longer wore sunglasses, though those eyes were not hers. They were wholly black, bleeding liquid ink from the edges. She flashed and disappeared, appearing just a few feet in front of him... but she wasn't a specter, not like the other ones. And she didn't attack. Rather, she just stood there, staring hollowly at him with jet-black, ink-bleeding eyes.

“Why?” the voice that came out wasn’t hers--it wasn’t soft, gentle, or flirtatious. Rather, it was cold, distant, robotic, and gnarled. Furthermore, her lips did not part, almost like she was a ventriloquist.

“Why what?” Asher asked. He’d realized that the Stage was ‘paused’, whatever that meant. As for why, he didn’t know just yet.

“Why are you not breaking?” the voice asked. “They all break. Crack. Kneel. Beg. Weep. Oh, weep--weep so deliciously. You, you don’t--you don’t weep. You don’t kneel. Why do you not beg? Oh, beg! Beg for it to stop!”

"..." Asher fell silent, having gotten the confirmation of his doubts--that the Stage's difficulty wasn't in the randomly-roaming specters, but rather the fact that the people would either be distracted or absolutely broken by their memories, allowing the weak ghosts to attack and kill. "Why did you interfere?"

“You dare question me?! Answer! Answer, mindless shell! Why don’t you weep? Beg? Kneel?” Asher frowned slightly, feeling that something was off. Though the experience was waking up even his sensors of fear, it seemed almost... too sterile. So, he decided to test something.

"You have access to all my memories," he said. "All my experiences. From cradle to the grave. Everything I've ever known, felt, and lived. Every high and every low, every cheer and every tantrum. You can see everything that I can remember. Probably more vividly than me, even. So, if I'm a mindless shell and I know why I am the way I am... what the fuck does that make you, if you don’t know?”

What followed was a sensational journey--a banshee scream ripped out right into his ears, causing them to bleed, while the entire world was submerged in darkness. By the time he blinked, it had changed--he was alone, stranded in the middle of the abyss, surrounded by specters beyond count. There were millions of them stretching in all cardinal directions, floating above the surface, eyeing them hungrily.

“Tell me! Tell me or they shall all devour you!” the voice warned from the depths. But, by now, Asher had confirmed it--it was all just smoke and mirrors. They, whoever they were, couldn't do anything to him. Not here, anyway. Maybe it was a bit stupid to poke the hornet's nest any further, but he also wanted to confirm another suspicion of his.

The world he was tossed into was carved out, with selfish interests everywhere. It was no different than Earth, present or past, where there were cliques and dissenting groups even within the umbrella group. The question was whether there was an overarching loyalty, a point within which even the most disgruntled groups would forgo their hatreds and join into a singular cause, and, if so, where was that breaking point? Was it an ordinary human challenging their authority? No, that wasn't it--for better or worse, he'd already done that a few times. So, he decided to see if he could get a few of the 'Lords' and 'Ladies' on his side in a more meaningful way than just random, weak Blessings.

“They’ll devour me? Come on, be real. They’re almost as pathetic as your attempts to break me,” he spoke into the void. “What was all this? Just a big joke? It was like watching a very bad, very cringe retelling of the story of my life, where you got the general plot well enough, but completely missed the point of the details. Student movies have more cohesive plots than whatever the fuck you shelved out there. I mean, seriously, how gullible are you? I 'accidentally' remember Hannah and you immediately, like an impatient child, show me this scene? Hah. I’ve played out this day a million times in my mind, you brainless mutt. And even in my most drunken or drugged states, I still didn’t manage to make it as pathetically painful to watch as you did. In a way, really, it was quite impressive--”

Asher found his ever-evolving rant interrupted--not by an attack or a screech or the world distorting yet again, but, rather, by finding himself back in the cabin. Even he stumbled in place for a moment, surprised and shocked.

There were no windows of any sort confirming or denying whether he cleared the Stage. Even Qyne didn't appear to gloat or shame him. Which really meant just one thing: his actions... reverberated much louder than he anticipated. And now... now he had to wait for judgment.