Chronicles of Myth Volume One: Twisted Daydreams

Scene Thirty-two

I walked into the waiting room, I sat down on the recliner and stared into the ceiling: Did I get lucky, did we get lucky? Or did we really beat them at their own game? Hell I don’t know anymore, I just want to leave this behind me. Elaine sat in the chair with me, squeezing between me and the left armrest; she gave me a kiss on the cheek, the real feeling of warm flesh seeped into my being and I embraced the quiescence of the moment; I felt a tear stream down my cheeks, “You still want to stick with me”? I forced out the words as they choked me, Elaine pressed a finger against my lips, “If I haven’t told you before… this is my home now, you’re my family along with everyone else we’ve taken in”. She wrapped her arms around me: “Don’t leave me, I don’t want to be alone anymore”. “So that’s what you’re afraid of”. “Elaine, I can’t say I won’t die on you, but for as long I am alive; I’ll do my best to be with you”. She wiped the tears on my face, “Let’s be alone together”. I felt something light up inside me, I felt my heart defrost and heard the beat as I fell asleep on the chair, with Elaine wrapped around me. I blankly stared up to the ceiling as I looked inside myself; it’s a time for introspection, despite how I may act, I’m far from happy you could go as far and say I’m a total wreck inside. The hardest thing about being an assassin, is where to draw to the line… another way to put it far will you go to get the job done; I’ll be completely honest when I say I know I’m on the wrong side of it all. I drifted into sleep; around me a wide corridor of white void, something inside me willed my feet forward and I followed with my footsteps echoing off the floors, slowly the walls around me became narrower and tighter; I placed my back on the wall and kept going until my hand felt a thin block of wall. I reached closer until I had no more room, I saw words: “Dead End”. 

“Isn’t it nice”, Reico’s voice echoed inside my head, I woke up slumped over the bar counter in the memorial; my vison and hearing cleared; I was clearheaded and calm despite being dead for the last few days, the ceiling fan above us lazily spun and I looked out the windows to see the evening light; it was just the two of us: Reico sat next to me leaning back on his chair with his feet propped up on the counter; he took off the white and silver striped tie around the collar of his mint green half-sleeve button down shirt, he looked at his khaki pants creasing out two folds, he sat up straight; reaching to his shirt pocket and passed me the silver key to the building, “The keys to your kingdom”; “what’s this about”? “I’m entrusting the memorial in your hands”. I felt the key in my hand; it was warm and full of life, “You’re leaving aren’t you”. “Sorry, I can’t play guardian for you guys anymore; I got my own family to look after”. “Fae aren’t immortal, we die just like anyone else it’s only a matter of when; our guardians are our lifelines, like anything else enough pressure is bound to snap the ties, severing the anchors linking us to this world.  I’m asking you now to watch over them; keep the ones you love safe, I know there are things inside you want to get rid of, this is how to do it”. “Reico, all the people I’ve loved died in my arms; how do you know they won’t end up the same”? “You don’t, that’s why you try to keep them alive”. “This wasn’t the type of therapy I’d expected, you don’t force a man to jump into the fire after he got burned from touching it”. “I’ve watched you for a long time, don’t you think it’s time to let go of your grief and move on; you’re never alone, stop holding on to the emptiness inside you”. “It all starts here… take the first step”. I felt pain inside start to wake up, “Teach yourself to let go”.  Grief is a poison sweetened by revenge, now the purging can begin… this is going to hurt like hell.  I was back in a circular room; the stark white tiles irritated my eyes as I focused my vision, I looked around us and saw the soft grey velvet drapes line the ceiling, sitting with Reico, face to face; I looked into the pained eyes of my friend, surprised at what he said, “It’s not your fault”, “Those people by all means deserved what they sowed”.  “Exorcise the demons of out you, Ashton you need to find peace within; don’t hold on to your grief; let go of what’s killing you”. Reico handed me a manila file, I opened the folds and saw cluster of fifteen faded pictures: I knew they were all of the people that died by my hands; all of the people I tried to set right, my failures, I looked into their blacked out faces once again; I started tearing up; cold tears streamed as I felt my blood boil, “You’ve never accepted what you’ve done… look at them and see if you can forgive yourself”. I held one of the greyed out pictures; I flipped the paper and saw the coordinates of the location: E 40, NW 10. “Ashton, I don’t expect you to go through with this; but free these souls”. I gripped the handles of my swords; “These are the last locations I’ve fought them, the graves I made for them; I’ve killed them once, I’m not killing them for good, they deserve to suffer for what they’ve done”. I stood up and turned my back on Reico, “Let them fester in limbo”. “You’re going to let their spirits linger in the world of the living”? I walked forward: “Leave me out of this, Reico what I’ve decided for them was their punishment, I heard his footsteps; “Don’t you want to wash their blood off your hands”? I drew my sword and held it at his throat, “Muramasa and Masamune, are the swords I used to kill these people; all of their souls remain trapped on this plain because of me, I don’t intend to free these people from their prisons… I what did is final, there is no compromise for my penance”. I drew my swords and faced Reico, “The weight of their grief is ingrained into my swords, my penance is the thing that grounds me from fading into nothing; it gives me purpose to keep on living to find out why I am”. I pressed my thumbs on the flat edges of the blades, and sheathed my swords: turning my back I walked into the desolate white in front of me; “I’m not going to do this, at least not yet; you’re asking me to permanently destroy a soul, the very essence of a person, that is the ultimate price to pay; these souls have repaid their debts to the world with their punishments; no one deserves to die completely”. “Absolve them of what they’ve become, I’m begging you; these souls are restless and need to be put down”. “You put down a rabid beast, not someone who could redeem themselves”; “Ashton, they’re not the people they were, whatever humanity in them has been altered into an abomination”. “Answer me something: will they be reverted to a bygone state before I had to put them down in the first place”? “Will purifying them give those people another chance at living”? He stood silent; I looked at the solemn expression edging the lines in his face as he chose his words, “Reico, I’ll do as you ask if you can cleanse them and bring them back to life”.   “Wouldn’t it be easier to destroy them completely”? “No, this is the only way I can find closure; I’m not out for their blood, I killed them as punishment for their crimes; this way I know I can save them from this fate, this is the only way I know that I can forgive myself for taking their lives in the first place”. “This is just like you. I expected you to carve your way out of a sea of spilled blood, but not like this; Ashton a corrupt soul can be made new, your swords are meant for severing ties of existence; you expect to the opposite of what you’d normally do; why take the chance”? “I’m doing this for myself, I want to know that I’ve become someone that can be loved again; I want to know what means to show compassion”. “Didn’t you say that your judgment was final”? “So willing I can change fate itself with these swords, to change the outcome into what I desire. “I’ve changed my fate countless times with these swords; there are many bullets that should’ve gotten me; each time I ended up dodging what would’ve been my last day on this earth. Don’t get me wrong I’ve accepted the fact that I will die and answer for the things I’ve done; but I’ve carved away deaths hold on me to many times to throw in the towel, so tell me why I can’t I do the same for someone else”. “True, that’s why I desire you; I wish to know why you’re death proof”. “I am creature that thrives on calamity, madness, sorrow; death is the cure for all things that plague our existence, the rest of world kneels before me as they succumb into their last state before passing on; yet there are those that can defy my hold on your life, the threads that cannot not be cut like yourself and your friends, countless times they’ve come so close to dying; yet they remain, subsist, and end up growing stronger than they were, those few that defy my hold are the next in a twisted line of evolutions; we are free from destiny, people like us scare me because there’s no permanent and defined end for us; doing nothing it simply is an endless existence of boredom, I know you fight for thrill of it; I reap souls for the same reason, but to see life after life to interminably experience the same cycles that is bound to drive the living, the ones we love into the ground, drives me insane and frustrates me to no end to know that I am helpless to watch the ones that I care about die and leave me behind”. “I know what it means better than anyone to lose everyone you’ve ever cared about, to watch them die right in front of you leaving you helpless to do anything about it; Reico, I could never forgive myself letting those people die under my watch; tell me something why do we keep doing the same over and over, it’s insanity yet we try and try hoping to change the inevitable; one of these days I’m going to die, and I’ll be on the other side of the abyss, leaving my friends behind… the way we look at things, there shouldn’t be a point in continuing to live”. “I suppose, tell me did you ever wonder why you exist, Ashton; why there is no set path for us to follow”? “People like us aren’t meant to have a destiny as a birthright, you and I; all of the people like us, are responsible to ourselves to make life mean something to us”. “We envy those who can live and die in ignorance because everything we know is as stable as a mound of sand; our decisions ebb and flow to match the end we make for ourselves, our lives aren’t meaningless by any definition; the point of living this kind of life is to define what existence means to you, in the end it’s all up to the individual to leave behind their legacy”. “Nihilism is the only philosophy I’ve accepted until now, but as I contented as I was to have the belief that things could be at rest when it’s all gone; left me feeling very empty, deep down no one wants to see anyone die, no one wants to die; we’re all bred with a certain desire to be remain alive, and preserve what we are; I’m a hypocrite, I’ve taken countless lives and broke so many of the people left behind, yet I’m not willing to die for my own crimes”. I saw the tears well in his eyes, he fell on his knees; for a brief moment I saw the condition of my being in the reflection of his eyes, a gaunt and haggard man; broken to his core, I looked at my own bloodshot eyes; I moved forward and wrapped my arms around Reico, I fell on my knees with him; “This is why we venture into insanity, in the hope that we can love and open up to the world again, that we try to hold onto to our humanity no matter how damaged it may be; we try over and over not to feel dead inside; that maybe for once we can change the course of things and not watch everyone we care about die needlessly, we are fateless because we have the power to change destiny and shape it into something worth living for”. “Come hell or high water, if I quit; I deny everything that I am and leave everything I know behind me, at that point; is when I die completely”. I felt his tears flow onto my shoulders, “Your words have cut deeper than any blade, Ashton I’ve been running on empty for a long time; I don’t think I can carry on living anymore, I’ve lost too much to fool myself into thinking that I can change the course of things”. “You’re not a tragic hero, so stop acting like it; I know deep down that both of us wants to protect the people we love, yet we can’t protect ourselves”. "Abandon your fears and be free; I’m not asking you to forget what has happened, I’m asking you to move on”.