Souled Out

by Blakely Chorpenning

  “What, her?”

  “Yes. Perform your Cypher duties. I’ll watch, the Members will listen, and you can try to prove us wrong. If you are truly Ellenore—”

  “I never claimed to be Ellenore. Get it right. I claimed to be the Cypher.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Prove it.”

  I walked over to the woman while Gabriel made himself cozy on a wooden crate. I pretended this was a normal reading. That’s right, just like being at home...if it had spontaneously turned into a thirteenth century oubliette.

  At least it seemed appropriate to talk to the woman like I normally would. Let her know what was happening. “Hi. Please don’t panic. I’m the Cypher. I’m just going to borrow your soul for a few minutes and then tuck it right back in there. You won’t feel a thing, and no one is going to kill you.” Under my breath, I added, “I hope.”

  Yeah, that would comfort me too if I were in her place. I sounded like a loon. It definitely threw me off knowing Gabriel was watching, waiting to report. But what else could I do? Do what you know, I guess.

  The whole show only took five minutes. It would have been less, but the poor woman was highly stressed, what with being restrained in a basement by the Members and all. When I returned her soul, a vampire came in and removed the woman. I told Gabriel what the woman’s soul released, which was nothing spectacular.

  This was the point where Gabriel normally left. But he didn’t. Couldn’t I leave, instead?

  “Aren’t you happy now?”

  Gabriel looked solemn. “No, but the test isn’t over.”

  As if on cue, the pain hit. It was starting and I lacked the privacy to make it seem less agonizing. But I tried to put on somewhat of a normal show by refusing to drop to my knees or roll up into a sad little ball and cry. I didn’t let my brain or heart explode. I just leaned against the wall and breathed very quick and shallow. My face may have revealed some pain, but other than a little irregular posture, I’m sure I looked a lot better than I felt.

  “Impressive. Next.”

  What else was there to do? I didn’t feel like playing video games. I stood straighter and tried to clear my head to find the last of my inner strength. “I am the Cypher,” I said more for my own benefit.

  Gabriel smiled. “That’s what I want to hear.”

  “Bring it, bitch.”

  His eyebrow lifted as he called in the vamp with another bound individual.

  Chapter Eleven

  Miserably, my test was not to pass one or two readings. It was to pass many.

  They went on for quite a while. I couldn’t recall a specific time—minutes, hours, days—because every morsel of self-control was directed at not letting my mind or body splinter to pieces.

  It was with the eleventh person that I really started to feel so shattered I wondered if I could go on. My mind kept wandering, making it hard to focus. And my professional morals were all but gone. Every “next” person seemed to be increasingly scared. I didn’t know what was happening before they were brought in, but I swore they’d been tampered with. It was just irregular to have so many freaking scared people, one after another, even under the grim circumstances. And all I had discovered were a series of non-consequential possibilities: Latter Day Saints disciple, Nintendo DX champion, wine aficionado, stalker, overeater, air guitar enthusiast, etc...

  As assuring as I wanted to be with them, I really just wanted to get through it. I found myself saying, “I’m the Cypher. Don’t panic. Holy God, for all things sacred and sweet, don’t panic and this can be over in a minute or less.”

  Stifled laughter filled the void behind me.

  I turned, challenging Gabriel’s smirk with a scowl. He stopped laughing. Why did I look back? Every damned time! Though as bad as I felt, I couldn’t let his laughter slide. “I’m sure you tell all your dates the same thing.”

  He smiled. How annoying. “Still lively? We underestimated your abilities.”

  “That seems to be a theme in my life.”

  I faced the man and breathed slowly a few times to block Gabriel out. Staring absently at the black material covering most of his face, my hand rested over that tender spot on his chest. I thought this one would be harder than the last, judging by their climaxing anxiety.

  Unlike my prediction, the vampire was unusually calm. I could feel some energy, but not at all like the others. It was easy to get a grip on his soul, smooth like honey. As I started to pull it in, I had a sense of familiarity. Had they been giving me previously read souls? No. If so, I would have felt it before, like watching a rerun. No. The others were strangers. This soul was different. Not because of its fearlessness, but because of its warmth, like a home I never knew I had.

  As I rolled his soul into that hollow space next to my heart, images and intimate emotions saturated my being. Devastating conflict and sadness were at the forefront, blocking anything more like an eclipse.

  Standing with my mouth unhinged, I wanted to cry out to anyone who would listen and take pity. There had to be a savior, deity, or overwhelming presence that could absolve me, someone or something that could make Seth forgive me this sin of trespassing on his soul.

  I threw it back into his chest and leaped backward. “Get him out!”

  “Disappointed?”

  I stepped closer to Seth only to say, “I am so sorry,” before storming over to Gabriel and screaming, “Get him out!”

  He nodded and the vamp took Seth away. I watched my only friend stumble silently into the darkness.

  “What did you learn?”

  “What does it matter? That wasn’t the point, was it?”

  The problem was, I had learned something, but nothing I would share.

  My stomach felt like it had literally been twisted. Every muscle wrapped around the others and squeezed. Was I losing circulation? After the third person, every muscle had been growing tighter and now it was uncontrollable, like they were shrinking around my bones, crushing them from anger. I worried that nothing but dust would be left when they were done with me.

  “You’re right. He was your personal party favor. How do you feel?”

  I breathed deeply. “Dandy.” But my eye cradled an unshed tear, ruining the tough girl illusion.

  Screw giving a good show. I had to sit down against the wall. I never saw people back to back like this. My body just couldn’t take it anymore, and my mind was in worse shape. I was truly unable to think straight. My emotions were running through the top layer of my skin, and my heart felt like exploding would be a welcome vacation.

  “Just one more. This one’s the whole party.” It was hard to pay attention to Gabriel. I wasn’t even sure what he he’d said. It wouldn’t register past the white noise permeating my head and spilling out of my ears.

  The same vamp brought in another person. He restrained her in the chair before leaving.

  “One more, Peaches, then it’ll be over.” I felt like a twinge of empathy—or remorse—had escaped Gabriel’s emotional tomb. Or maybe my ability to distinguish authenticity from bullshit had crashed.

  As hard as it was, I stood up and walked to the woman in the chair. “I’m the Cypher, blah, blah, blah. Stay calm.” Yeah, my morals were out the window.

  I laid my hand on the woman’s chest and started to persuade her soul out. To my surprise, it practically soared into my chest. I flew back, hitting the ground flat on my back. That was definitely a first.

  Sensations radiated from my heart like it had finally been doused with water after a hundred year drought. A burst of sunshine ran through my body, calling attention to just how cold I had been minutes before. No, how cold I had been for years.

  “No!” My voice choked the room.

  My own soul wiggled down to fill the empty space. I wouldn’t have been more shocked if I had heard a click. My soul was back. Mine. This couldn’t be happening. They gave me my sister to read! I had to get rid of it before it really took hold again. It was hard enough the first time to reject. And af
ter the evening, I wasn’t sure I had the strength to do it again if I waited much longer.

  Before I could extract it, all sorts of things started flooding through me. It was almost like I was reading my own soul, and I didn’t want to know what she was capable of doing with it. That was too much. I prayed to be released from this pulverizing spectacle.

  I threw my soul back into Ellenore, knocking her over in the chair as I ran for the stairs. Gabriel cut me off, hauling me to the earthen floor, but I wasn’t trying to get out of the basement. It was my skin I wished to flee.

  I pushed away from Gabriel again, kicking and wiggling. Losing my soul a second time sent a resonating chill throughout my being, like jumping from a desert into an icy ocean. And the thought of someone touching me, wanting to touch me for any reason, made me fight harder.

  Gabriel got a well-deserved kick in the stomach when I fell and couldn’t aim for his head. I scrambled to get up. He came from behind and wrapped his arms around the core of my body while I flailed, and then he lifted me off the ground. I started screaming, wordless, guttural.

  The fury pulsing through my empty chest was heart wrenching. Literally. It was like that hollow space had turned to metal spikes, piercing soft tissue from the inside out. It was pissed that I wouldn’t let it be used, that I couldn’t let it have what it wanted most. At that moment, it was punishing me for every soul it had held and every soul it was forced to give back.

  It wanted nothing more than to see me dead.

  Dying would be good. It would release me from the pain I felt day after day, from the judgment that empty space loomed over my head minute by minute. And I understood its anger. I wanted to give it what it desired. Was it asking too much from my heart to stop, to give up, to move on?

  Nausea coursed through my world while invisible fingernails raked at my organs, and nerves were being carved out one by one with dull knives. I continued to fight and Gabriel squeezed tighter. Even his vampire strength had trouble controlling the rage and sorrow. Time passed slowly as we grappled, Gabriel never letting go for fear I would kill us all, I supposed. Or possibly, he feared I had the power to drag every one of them into hell with me.

  Suddenly, without warning, my legs went limp, the excess energy drained like a stopper pulled from a tub. Gabriel let us fall slowly to the ground. When I crumpled with my knees shoved to my chest and his arms, he was forced to huddle around me like a shell.

  Clearly stunned, he motioned to the other vampire. With one tiny gesture, my sister was gone, carried away into an unknown house full of bad intentions. Gabriel leaned over my withered frame, arms firmly wrapped across my arms and chest. However, his hold had turned into more of an incredibly long bear hug.

  After a second, he stretched his legs out to the left and right of mine. He was so close I could feel the warmth of his body on my back like scalding water. I didn’t think he was that warm from feeding because he hadn’t eaten yet. The more plausible answer: I was inhumanly cold.

  We slowly started rocking back and forth. Not much, but enough to notice. It was Gabriel rocking, and since he had a death grip around me, I was forced to follow suit. But it came to a close when he spoke. He was still too taken aback to hide his concern when he asked, “What just happened?”

  I wanted to speak, but a sobbing moan escaped instead. That reactivated the rocking.

  I hurt so completely. The physical pain was bad, but the sadness was a disaster all its own. I had never felt quite like this, not even when I first gave my sister her life back. I was paralyzed with anguish and horror. Yes, horror was the word. My aura was horrified at what I had done. To feel the first moment of bliss in so many years, and then feel it ripped away. Out.

  The physical discomfort was nothing compared to the metaphysical consequences. And after a few minutes they blended to create a monster trapped within my simple flesh-and-bone casing. My eyes locked excruciatingly tight as I held my breath. A world of static space consumed me. When that held breath wasn’t released, Gabriel shook me. Not hard, just enough to startle the life back into me. He’d been talking, and I’d been oblivious. Space was funny like that.

  “What?” I relaxed enough to take a deep breath. Well, it wasn’t too deep since Gabriel was still strapped to my back like a baby koala.

  Like a whisper from the grave, he asked, “What just happened here?”

  “My soul.”

  Gabriel loosened his grip and spun me to face him. We were still sitting on the ground. My left leg crumpled against his chest as my right sprawled out under his left. If I hadn’t been distracted with such a magnitude of sorrow, I might have commented on how well he was handling his fear of dirt because, let me just say, the basement was the epitome of grunge.

  “Your soul is gone. This isn’t a revelation.”

  My voice was barely there, but I knew Gabriel could hear it. “I know. I gave it back. Again.”

  “Gave it to who?”

  “Ellenore.”

  “That was your soul?”

  He was asking so many questions, I could have sworn he really had no inkling of what just took place. Apparently he didn’t know as much about my arrangement as either of us suspected.

  My voice was very flat, airless. “It was mine. Gone again.”

  Anger struck his face like a lightening bolt. This test had gotten tiresome long before I was forced to relive the hardest moment of my life. Then again, it was almost the easiest moment. I knew what I had to do and did it willingly. It was the pain that was hard. Arduous.

  “I gave it back.” Through a growing tightness in my throat, I strained to say, “Again.” And with a sudden surge of energy, I started yelling. Breaking from Gabriel’s arms, I leaned upward on my knees, yelling at the Members. All of my anger channeled toward the five undead bodies upstairs. “I wrenched it out and gave it back again, you bastards! My soul belongs to her because I gave it to her. Because I am the Cypher! What else do you want from me? How else can I prove it if you don’t care? I can’t make you understand what you refuse to see!”

  In one quick motion, Gabriel was gone from my back, fleeing the room. I was soulless and alone once again—in a dirty, strange basement, to boot. Maybe they would leave me to die. I didn’t care. I collapsed to the cold floor, waiting for the pain to recede, though I was doubtful it would ever truly be gone. After some time, a sense of calm flushed away the most daring pains and I was able to relax enough to close my eyes.

  I had never figured myself to be a nap person, but in one evening I was waking up for the second time. This time I was lying on a light brown couch. I could see through the doorway that I’d passed this room when we walked to the kitchen earlier. With my head positioned at the end of the sofa, I could see right into the dining room. It had furniture now. And it seemed likely the chair I woke up in the first time belonged to the matching dining suite. In fact, it looked like the table was being prepped for dinner.

  My head hurt. My body hurt. My heart mourned. I could go for some grub.

  Chapter Twelve

  Gabriel walked in through a back entry in the room. “Feeling better?”

  He was trying to be friendly now? He helped snare me into the current mess and hadn’t even bothered to find out the entire truth of it. I just didn’t understand him. One minute he was mean, another all business, and another nicer than sweet tea on a muggy day. But it seemed, no matter which Gabriel showed up, he always managed to ruin whatever I had going for me. Maybe I could hold an intervention to get him out of my life.

  “Don’t talk.” He was being gentle, but there was an eruption waiting just below the surface of his persona. His body was stiff when he sat to my left, though the humming tension wasn’t directed toward me for once.

  “You didn’t know.”

  Gabriel’s eyes flinched. “I had no idea.” It was a splinter in his ass to admit anything making him look less than perfect.

  “Did the Members?”

  “Yes,” he hissed.

  “Can
I see my sister now?”

  “In a few minutes. There are things that need to be addressed.” He reverted to the businessman. “When we enter, sit down. Don’t stand when she enters the room. Don’t talk to her until one of the Members initiates the conversation. Then you can ask anything you wish.”

  “Are you, like, my chaperone for the evening?” I was joking until he nodded. “Really? Why you? No one else wanted to do it, right?” He hesitated, staring at something completely captivating on the floor. “That’s okay. I’ve purposely built a reputation for people to dislike me. Most people hate me, in fact.” Well, contrary to how it sounded, I wasn’t proud, but I openly recognized that it was the existence I had constructed to live in.

  “They don’t dislike you.”

  “Yeah, they do. It’s okay.”

  He kept talking as if I hadn’t interrupted. “You’re awkward. That makes people nervous. Nervousness can be viewed as weakness. They don’t like the way you make them feel about themselves, so your company is unpopular.”

  “Point taken. I can wait alone. I don’t need a babysitter.” I sincerely meant that. There’s nothing worse than obligatory company.

  “I’m fine where I am.”

  “Gabriel, just leave me alone. It’s been a shitty night.”

  “Your awkwardness doesn’t bother me, just your demeanor, although that seems to be fading.” He paused, tilting his head just enough to be disarming. Gazing from the corners of his eyes he added, “I think it’s a ruse.”

  Well, miracles do happen. He was capable of being affable, even downright charming, when he wanted to be.

  “Are you flirting?” I pretended to fan myself. “Give a girl time to recover before we send out save-the-dates.”

  “That would be a spectacle.”

  A thin smile touched my lips. “I don’t think we have enough in common for that.”

  Gabriel smiled, about to say something, when the curt sound of a chime pulled us back to the now. The dinner bell left our brief walk to the dining room sobering and utterly disheartening.