by Elizabeth Lo
After each question, he sounded ready to spell out a retort, but at the last one, he goes eerily silent.
Well? I push, but his silence makes me nervous.
After a moment, he finally puts together the words he wants to say.
I want you to save the country.
“…What?”
My eyes meet my reflection in the mirror in confusion, but she quickly looks away.
Look, I know it sounds extravagant and like it came straight out of a work of fiction, but I can assure you, this is no laughing matter.
But that only makes me fidget even more.
Save the country? I think. I’m sorry, but I think you’ve come to the wrong person.
I’m not asking you to go fight a dragon or fight a war. But that’s the best way I can put it. Because the entire country has been dramatically affected by a curse for the past couple of years, whether you know it or not. And unfortunately, due to certain circumstances, we must end it now.
Curse? I ask.
Yes. Curse. The Memento Mori Curse…
Memento Mori Curse… It sounds familiar. I survey my cluttered room until I find the newspaper lying atop a pile of dusty books. It was in a short little section in the newspaper—barely longer than the length of my index finger. I didn’t read it, but it caught my attention.
What are its effects? I ask cautiously, inching my way towards that newspaper.
The Memento Mori Curse, Sucre begins, a curse named by many veterans and soldiers is said to be spreading amongst the citizens—and sufferers are rapidly going insane, though its true effects are unknown. It’s speculated that the curse probably has something to do with soul transferals, though the evidence is lackluster.
You’re reading off the newspaper excerpt, I say, tracking every single word he says in that little box of text. You’re not being completely truthful, are you, sir.
I would tell you more but now is not the time. I need to know if you’re on board or not.
You’ve got to tell me more than that, I state nervously into my mind. What do you want from me? Why me?
All right, I’ll get there. Be patient.
I take a deep breath, waiting.
Your eyes… he says slowly. No, the magic that made your eyes the way they are can do much more than you realize. Much more than just resurrection.
Oh? I trace the grains of the wood floor with my fingernail. Did you think I would be happy to hear that?
No, Midnight. This is the real deal. No council this time. No unnecessary death. No show-and-tell. This time, it’s your choice on whether or not you want to use it.
“No,” I say, dropping the telecommunication completely. He can still hear me anyway. “I know it may be… condescending of me to say this, but I think you offering me a ‘choice’ is a little…”
No, stop. I shouldn’t be this negative. I should just politely decline him.
“I know you came to me for help…” I start again. “But I’m afraid I probably won’t meet your expecta—”
I understand it wasn’t your choice, he interrupts. But what you decide to do with yourself is your choice.
Dull pain flares from my lip as I chew on it.
He seems to sense that it won’t be enough to convince me.
And look. You’re already trying to destroy your own existence right now. Why not just do this one last thing? If you have nothing left to lose, then why not just come break this curse?
I nod as if I understand, but then his words begin to sink in.
Wait… Did you just say “break a curse”? I think back to him, a giggle building in my throat.
Hearing a magical being saying, “break a curse” is like hearing a doctor say, “solve an illness.” It’s commonly thought amongst non-magicians that curses are “breakable.” That if you meet a magician and cast a few spells, you can suddenly be broken free from your curse. In reality, curses are barely ever overcome, though they usually affect untrained magicians the most.
Sucre scoffs in my head.
I did not make an elementary mistake, I assure you of that, he retorts. You may know the first two ways of overcoming a curse, but what you don’t know is that there is a third way that is comparable to “breaking” the curse; it happens almost like an instantaneous spell.
He pauses to phrase his next sentence.
And… obviously, he says carefully. It has to do with the hidden magic linked to your eyes.
Hidden magic? I ask, curious despite my best efforts.
Anyway, he continues on, ignoring my question, I want you to know that if you help save the country and “break” this curse, you may very well find that will to live that you seem to lack.
You’re mistaken, I think. There is a reason why I want to die, Sucre.
Once again, he seems to pause as if he’s sighing on the other side. Seems to me that you don’t want to die, just that you need a reason to not die. I can give you that, Midnight. I can give you that reason.
The corner of the thin paper curls and uncurls under my fingertips, and my mind keeps furling and unfurling over this.
Why should I help this giant pink cat?
Why shouldn’t I? What’s stopping me? After all, it’s exactly like he said. It’s not like I have anything left to do anyway.
I mess with the paper a little while longer before finally tearing the corner off completely.
“All right. I’ll help you.”
And I swear I could see that cat smirk in my mind.
Take a train and head to the Summer Palace immediately then, he says. There’s a certain person preparing to kill me tomorrow—the one who set this whole thing into motion.
Chapter Five
Lafayette
Lafayette looks down at his hands with apprehension, the dark red smeared all across his arms. Drying blood crusts his face and clumps in his hair, as the dry air plasters it to him. He traces the creases of his hand, unable to look any further past his fingertips out of the disgust and satisfaction of what he might see beyond them.
His heart still races, his breath is still quick in his chest as if he had just freshly pulled the trigger or sunk his knife deep into the flesh of another human being. He can still feel a faint trace of warmth from the blood splattered onto his shirt just moments ago that oozed out onto him, soaking his previously pristine white sleeve and seeping through the fabric like an angry red plague.
He feels a confining sort of freedom.
Just seconds ago, he was laughing. Just seconds ago, he felt energy rush into him by the gallons, his black and white world wiped away and replaced by rich, dark red.
Now, he sits on the slippery floor, washed with blood, sweat, and maybe even some tears, the weight of his actions lowering itself down onto his shoulders, his heavy heart weighing even more than before. The pulse in his ears that had pushed him forward with every beat is just an empty echo in his mind.
Finally, he takes in a deep breath, and his entire body shakes.
Skipping the view of carnage, he throws his head back and laughs.
It’s an empty laughter. The type meant just to fill the silence and push down the guilt rising in his chest. The echo in the air is desolate, and even though when he looks up, there is sunlight peeking in through the high windows, all it does is make him feel even more detached.
His laughter fades out to a groan and then a long exhale. Cloudy light faintly shines into the room, and a faint mist fogs out of his mouth.
Why is he still here? Still crouched in the cafeteria of the military base in Falconry—the city of Falcons, home to the Falcon family. His family.
At least the ceiling was untouched, he thinks to himself. That high-reaching ceiling with grime-covered light bulbs. Safe from the splatters of blood everywhere else around him. When’s the last time he actually looked at it? Maybe if he just keeps looking at it, he can pretend nothing really happened.
Without any other noise, he’s left to the sound of his own breath in the deadened
air.
When he pulls himself back into a somewhat normal sitting position, he closes his eyes, counts to three, and then reopens them, finally forcing himself to face his situation.
Bodies. Lots of them.
All in the same uniform, each with their own variation to it. Each with at least one hole leaking blood somewhere on their body. A lot of them have been shot. Many have been stabbed. One man, the last man standing, was strangled to death right underneath him.
He remembers this soldier, who now carries angry blue and red marks on his neck. This was the one that liked to talk smack about him. Granted… a lot of soldiers liked to talk about Lafayette behind his back.
“About Colonel Lafayette Falcon… isn’t he supposed to be the legendary King of Snakes? That war hero from Dvitreland?”
“Yeah,” came the answer. “If you could call him a ‘hero’ of any sort.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t know? Everyone calls him this great person or whatever, but you wanna know what he’s really famous for?”
“Yeah…?”
“They say that he was the sole survivor of every squadron he was in. That’s why he’s called a hero. Because he lived through every operation and stole the credit for himself. Disgusting, right?”
“Really? Is that true?”
“Yeah, sorry to let you down, man. But I mean, we all know. There isn’t a lick of heroism in that guy. I stick around for the status, but despite all that, he’s really kind of… boring.”
Me, the boring one? Lafayette thinks to himself. No… it’s the world around me… that is so… so… achingly boring.
However, the slander of his soldiers wasn’t the only trigger of the morning. One can push down a domino, but there needs to be more in order for a full reaction to occur.
All of the soldiers had begun acting peculiar. Very peculiar. They flinched at the idea of death, yet hungered and thirsted for it whenever Lafayette’s father brought a new prisoner to the gallows. More and more complaints about soldiers were being filed—mostly for misconduct and violent acts. It was strange. From an outside view, everything might have seemed normal, but inside, everyone was slowly crumbling away.
Funny how Galviton, revered for its military, had, in a little more than a few years, fallen into corrupt disarray.
The cause of this… “corruption” was unknown. Just, slowly, starting about three or four years ago, people starting going insane. No one knew why; all they knew was that it had to do with dead people. But more specifically, murdered people.
Especially since the place with the most killers was this very military.
Just two years ago, Galviton was trying to help an allied country, Dvitreland, fight off an invasion. What ensued afterwards was disturbing, to say the least. People started complaining about voices in their heads. There were mutterings at night, slowly buzzing through the hallways, random screams and shouts, and unexplained breakdowns.
And then, it escalated to more than just voices. It became full-on spirits. Spirits of the victims from those fights in that other country, filling up soldiers’ heads and driving them to madness. Some started calling it the “Memento Mori curse”—the Memories of Death. Memories, they assumed. That’s all it was. Lafayette knows better by now.
The final straw was yesterday, when the news had spread that their very own revered Queen Glorieux Dolce Frost had killed their king, Chevalier Bordeaux Galviton, in cold blood. In other words, the country was inexplicably put into a state of anarchy in a single day.
A negative force swept through the ranks like a disease, but everyone was suffering some form of madness already. And that same madness is what drove everyone to break today.
He doesn’t remember what came over him as he walked into the cafeteria. The hustle and bustle of the men and women around him were as usual, perhaps a little more intense than before.
As he had approached the cafeteria this morning, his footsteps resonated in his ears like a bomb ticking away. He knew what he was doing. This was no accident.
BANG.
Smoke dissipated from his gun, with its muzzle pointed upwards at the tall, mud-green ceiling above. It took all he had to fight the satisfied smile creeping onto his face. For a small moment, the entire room went completely quiet.
He already knew what would happen next.
At least a handful of them started shaking. Seconds later, they lunged at him with feral screams in their throats, fear in their eyes. A spirit is most easily triggered by an event having to do with their death. He should know—he has a dead spirit of his own inside him.
For those poor souls trapped in the wrong bodies, gunshots would only haunt them still as he turned his gun away from the ceiling and instead towards the wide-open foreheads of his soon-to-be victims.
Maybe he could’ve explained it as him being attacked. From an outsider’s view, it could have looked like they had started attacking him, and he was defending himself. But it wasn’t. He knew exactly what would happen. People, to Lafayette, are too easy to read, too easy to predict their next move. Simple-minded and straightforward. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
And down each and every one went, with every gunshot prompting more and more laughter from Lafayette and more and more people joining the action.
Of course, not everyone was “possessed.” Some people might have approached him to stop him. But that, to Lafayette, didn’t matter. To anyone who might have viewed that incident, Lafayette was just protecting himself from onslaught of men and women going insane inside the cafeteria, and he just couldn’t distinguish who was and who wasn’t sane.
That’s not what actually was going through his mind, though. He just felt a savage need for revenge coursing in his veins.
Maybe Lafayette’s own restlessness and frustration was also at its breaking point. Maybe it was because he had finally built up the courage to break free of his monotony with that beginning gunshot. Maybe the insanity of the men had nothing to do with it.
Somehow, it was just the day for everyone’s glass walls to crack.
It was the day for him to finally get tired of being tired of his life.
He should feel better now.
So then, why does he feel even more exhausted?
He should be free. The expectations are gone. The monotony is gone. His future is uncertain. Something about that is thrilling, yet overwhelmingly daunting.
Get up, comes a voice, breaking the silence in his mind. It rings through his head as if someone just spoke inches away from his ear. Get up.
“Why are you talking to me now, Orion?” Lafayette mumbles. “Do you want to take over, too? Are you also going to go crazy like me and the rest of them?”
Orion, the spirit currently taking up residency within Lafayette, doesn’t respond.
“Oh, come on,” Lafayette goads. “Don’t you have some of your usual advice to give? Tell me to fix myself? To do something? Well, I did. I did something different today. Are you happy now?”
His words sound harsh even in his own ears, but he’s not really mad at Orion. He’s just not sure what to do with this hole in his chest.
“Some of them might have been fine,” Lafayette mutters. “Some of them might not have gone crazy yet.”
Orion stays quiet for a moment.
You will have to face yourself one day, he finally says softly.
“Face myself? What, atone? Forgive?”
No. Not atone. One day, you’ll have to face yourself for real. And live.
“I am alive, what are you talking about, you dead man?”
You’re not living. You’re only pretending to.
The truth of Orion’s words resound through Lafayette painfully. As much as he doesn’t want to admit it, he’s right. As Orion usually, and infuriatingly, is.
What’s your name? Lafayette asked when they first met.
I can’t tell you.
Why?
Uh, I was a… famous military magician’s appre
ntice… And one night, drunk at a party, he ended up killing me in a blind rage. The next thing I know… I was in you. They tried to cover it up, so if word came out that I’m still… here it would cause trouble for him and you.
Then… what should I call you?
Hmmm… ‘Orion.’
‘Orion’? Why?
Because I like the way it sounds.
How long has it been since Orion has occupied his mind?
Orion will talk to him or interrupt his thoughts. Occasionally, during his dreams, Lafayette will get flashbacks of the spirit’s life, and occasionally, some objects will trigger memories that are not his own. But at least compared to what he saw other dead “spirits” do, Orion is a quiet sheep in the background.
Dazed and lightheaded, Lafayette ignores the dead man’s statement and gets off the strangled soldier. The door where he stood minutes, maybe even hours, ago offers a cranky growl at him as it swings open. He doesn’t want to look anymore. The sight only makes that weight in his stomach sink further.
With his moment of freedom, he gained wings for the first time and finally let loose to wipe away the gray screen over his world. But it lasted for only as long as his bullets flew in the air, and he fell to the ground as his wings turned to heavy stone. He finally got a good look at himself. Now, when he sees himself, all he sees is nothing but the empty shell of a human being with nothing. A broken machine. His freedom… was it even real?
He wonders this as flattened, dry dirt crinkles underneath his feet, taking him through rows of planes on standby in the hangar of the base. One reluctant plane opens up its cockpit as he pulls himself into it almost drunkenly. He doesn’t pay attention to anything around him—just tunnel visions his way into the plane and starts the thing with mechanical efficiency. Nothing matters anymore. If he dies now, well, who cares?
He just wants to run.
But this time, he won’t be escaping monotony. He’s escaping the world, which will inevitably turn against him. In one morning, he has cut all ties with humanity.