That’s impossible. That would make me almost 40 years old! she thought.
These records were from eight years ago.
They showed the tests performed, the gynecological exams, and then the x-rays and MRI’s. She skipped to the doctor’s notes.
After a complete examination into Miss Demonica’s issues with child-bearing, I have come to the following conclusions: Miss. Demonica’s cervix and uterus have scars of a type I have never seen. The damage is irreparable. Like someone took a utility knife or a razor blade to her reproductive organs in an attempt to remove and/or destroy them so that she could never again bear children. The scar tissue is conducive to this type of internal trauma.
Miss Demonica is not capable of ever again bearing children with this type of damage to her organs. Her fallopian tubes are so scarred that there is no way an egg could pass through. In the event that one actually did, and became fertilized, her uterus would not be able to nurture it, as damaged as it is, and her cervix would not be able to hold it.
Lydia had her hands to her lips to quiet her devastated sounds. She kept reading the progress notes.
Attempted to contact Miss Demonica to arrange an appointment to speak with her, no response. No call back.
And the last note read:
The number provided to us is now disconnected.
But Lydia’s eyes kept wandering back to the, ‘She can never have another child. She can never again bear children.’ All saying, she’d had one before she’d come to this medical facility at an age the birthdate said she was 32 years old.
***
Dwayne had located Danny in Florida, and now being the master of Danny’s body, he could not travel in his usual means. So he’d had to book a flight to New York City, pay for it with Danny’s credit cards, which Danny threw a bit of a fit about, and board a plane. When they’d gotten to New York City, after Dwayne had luxuriated in first class seats, food, and a whole lot of alcohol, security had told them to wait, while others were passing through. That was the time when Danny decided to tell him that there was a warrant for his arrest.
“You idiot!” Dwayne had screamed at him, then begged to go to the bathroom for all the things eaten and drank throughout the trip. When the bathroom didn’t have a window large enough for Danny’s lard-ass body to crawl through, Dwayne considered leaving him right then and there and finding another body that was less a liability to occupy.
But, in occupying the same body, Danny heard his thoughts, and pleaded with him to not do that, so instead, they ran, found an instant cab available to take them to Aliyah, but the temptations of the strip club along the way had him salivating. Aliyah could wait. She probably wasn’t home right now anyway, but this … ? Oh, he’d been so long without the human pleasures.
“They’re not going to find us here,” he told Danny, trying to settle him down from his panic of being caught.
“She did this to me. None of this would have happened - I would not have even done these things if not for her,” Danny raged. “Now I’m a wanted criminal.”
“Don’t worry, my friend. We’re about to end what was started a long time ago. Then and only then can we find peace. Her death will ensure that our suffering can end.” Dwayne reassured him.
Then used Danny’s card to pay for drinks and women.
***
The Light knight awoke, and found himself in an empty apartment with a note saying, ‘I’ll be back soon’, a note of which he’d woken to hours ago and she wasn’t back yet. Leave it to Aliyah to not even recognize the threat on her life and just go about her business as though it nothing, while he was left with all the pressure from both Otherland and the Otherworld to uphold his duties while trying to protect her at the same time.
When she finally walked through the door, he’d had so much time to get mad at her that he didn’t even wait for her to step through it.
“What is your problem? I’m trying to protect you and you just go about your business, leave me here, without me having any idea of where you’ve gone. I have a duty to Otherland, which I’m trying to fulfill, at the same time I have my duty to you, and as usual, you are keeping me from being able to do either.”
He’d said all this before she’d even gotten the door fully open.
“Are you just going to sit there and yell at me or are you going to help me?” she said in response to all he’d said. She was carrying a bunch of bags.
He felt so frustrated. All this time without memories, Lydia had been a scared, jumpy, anxious little mouse. But Aliyah was as stubborn and unafraid as before. She drove him crazy.
He grabbed some of the bags from her hands, all the while lecturing her, “You are in danger. You can’t just go wherever you want and do whatever you please and leave me here, helpless, having no idea where you are, and driving myself mad wondering if bad things have befallen you?”
“Befallen? Really?” she smirked at him. Color had returned to Lydia’s former pale features, and Aliyah now looked vibrant, so much so he found it impossible to stay mad at her. Besides, strong emotions were common in Otherworld, whereas Otherland such things weren’t felt as powerfully. He was still getting accustomed to the differences. Like how much his heart hurt every time he looked too long into her eyes.
“Where’s your friend? … Uh, Cherise?”
“She went to work.”
“You humans have no sense of anything, not even when you’re in danger, do you?” he said frustrated.
“You humans?” she laughed. “I don’t know if you checked lately, but you’re human too.”
“Yeah, but I’ve spent the majority of my life serving my Father in Otherland.”
“Your Father? What are you, some kind of angel or something?”
“I’m a Light knight. You still don’t remember anything, do you?”
“Do you know anything about my reproductive organs being sliced to pieces, which is why I can’t bear children?” she suddenly turned on him bitterly.
Darn, the smiles and laughter had been a cover-up. Humans were tricky with their emotions. Something else he had to try to remember, as she was now staring him down and walking toward him while he was hurriedly stepping back with his arms splayed in front of him, as though as to ward her off.
“He was very bad to you, that’s all I know. That’s how we found one another to begin with, but you never told me your human life. You just kept showing up in Otherland. Most humans come there by mistake, but once they do, our Bylaws, they can never return again, because we can’t risk their exposing things. We keep them there, eventually their human body dies, and they become a soul.
“But you, Aliyah, escaped time and time again. You’d return, escape, return, escape, risking everything, so I created a place, another place, not the Otherland, a place inbetween, that you could go and we could meet. I risked everything then to keep you protected, and now I’m risking all those same things again. They want me to bring you back there to attend a Ceremony trial, where of course, their sentencing would be to contain you and keep you from returning to this world, because you know too much, and here you’re spending your day shopping.”
“Well, apparently your world must be very stupid if it thinks I, or anyone else, is showing up on purpose. I can’t control what I do, or where I go in my sleep. You say they want you to bring me back there to stand trial when I haven’t done anything wrong, and I don’t even have any memory of it, so it sounds like your world isn’t much different than my own. People constantly being punished for the things they can’t control,” Lydia ranted.
“Do you know, I just lost my fifth job in 14 months, because of sleep issues? All I’m trying to do is move forward in my life, work a job, and do what other people do, and I can’t do that, because I can’t fall asleep when I’m supposed to, and when I do fall asleep, I lose a complete sense of reality, so that I can’t wake up to do and be responsible for what every other person in this world does. Do you know what that’s like? All I care about is working
a job so I can make a paycheck, and my issues won’t allow me to have that.”
Now she was just slamming cupboards.
“Yeah, I can say I do know what that’s like,” he said, referring to his responsibility to her.
“Now you’re trying to tell me that the very world that I go to in my sleep that keeps me from waking up on time for work is now wanting to punish me for going there? It’s like, I can’t win! Nothing I do. I’m pissing people off on all fronts, all the while having no idea why it’s like this to begin with, when all I want to do is live a normal life.”
“So you don’t have any idea, not a clue, why you’ve been traveling to Otherland since you were a small child?”
“I hardly think that I’ve been going through this since childhood,” she said. “All of this is very new to me. I don’t understand it, but I’m trying to.”
“Yet you understand you’re in danger?”
“I understand that he’s coming for me, and it terrifies me to the core of my being, but I don’t know why, just as I accept that we’ve known each other for a long time, and we’re connected in some way, but that doesn’t mean that I remember a god damn thing. And I look at you, and I have no idea who you are or why you’re here.”
“That’s always as it was every time I met you. You always seemed so innocent, without memories. You could never tell me why you were there, or why you didn’t want to go back, but every time my world tried to keep you, you always went back,” he murmured.
“Like I said, your world is apparently as stupid as my own. It sounds like I just went back and forth, trying to escape this world, then trying to escape yours. It’s like no one and nothing could ever understand,” she said with pain filling her voice.
“Understand what, Aliyah?”
“I have no idea. It’s just something I know without knowing, and is obviously something you can’t help me with,” she said, sounding like she wanted to give up on all things.
“You don’t remember me at all?” he asked sadly, as he had never forgotten her.
“No. All I know is you can’t help me. No one can. If you come from another world, you’d be best to return there and leave me be, and tell your people I don’t mean no harm. Again, I can’t help what I do when I’m sleeping.”
CHAPTER 15
The summons came again that evening, in the human world, where the sun was yet to set and the darkness yet to come. This time when he arrived, he demanded of the elders to meet with the High master, refusing to tell them anything. He wound up in the globed room, bowed on his knees, facing a presence he had never actually seen.
“She is not guilty of anything. She has no control over coming here. She doesn’t remember her human life, nor does she remember any of her travels. I know that I have been given the job to return her here, but I’ve known her since she was a child, and her being a child and now an adult, she doesn’t know why she comes here. Instead of trying to imprison her, we should be trying to figure out what has kept her coming here all these years. Instead of punishing her, we should be trying to help her so that she can make that choice of where she wants to be.”
And he was gently answered with, “I am All Knowing. There is nothing you can tell me that I don’t already know. Continue on with your mission as intended.”
And that was it.
Chagrined, he returned to the human world, completely exhausted, his human body needing so many things, mostly sleep.
She laid curled against the wall on her bed in her small apartment.
Not knowing what else to do, and needing sleep so badly himself, he crawled onto the bed beside her, needing to be close to her. Cautiously, he brought his arm around her. “I love you,” the thought instantly flared in his brain. Fortunately for him, it was only in Otherland when things could be communicated without speaking.
She sighed and pulled him into herself, “I love you too, Jacob Knight,” she murmured in her sleep, where he knew he’d be able to find her.
So holding her hand, he slipped into a deeper subconscious state, and found her in the inbetween “Aliyah,” he pulled at her arm.
She seemed surprised at first to see him there.
“Come with me. I want to show you something. Perhaps, it’ll help you with your memories.”
But she let go of his hand and burst out laughing.
“What? What’s so funny?”
“What are you wearing?”
He looked down at his armor, the strips of hide that barely covered his parts, while his shoulders, his chest, and his face were protected, his shield at his back, his sword in its sheath. “My – my uniform,” he said. “I am a Light knight, you know. Things take on different appearances between and within worlds. You used to love my uniform,” he pouted momentarily. “And you, apparently, have forgotten how this works.” He kept his head turned respectfully away from her.
“What do you mean things take on a different -?” The horror slowly dawned on her as she looked down at herself. “Where’s my clothes? Where’s muh-my uniform?” she grappled to cover her exposed nudity, while he tried to contain his laughter as much as possible.
“You’ve forgotten so much, Aliyah, and I fear it’s all my fault. You cannot just automatically take your physical possessions into this realm, as those belong in the physical world. You have to – you have to -,” and he could contain it no more.
He laughed harder than he had in ages, as first frilly blue underwear and a matching bra appeared on her body, and was just as quickly discarded. Then full-bodied armor appeared, crushing her to her knees with its weight.
“Aren’t Light knights supposed to be honorable and decent? Stop … looking at me while I get this sorted out.”
Finally, she settled on a simple, yet fitting, white dress, and a head-dress to hold back the long hair she’d sprouted in her attempts to cover herself.
“I want a sword,” she stomped her foot, then almost fell over with its unsuspecting weight. “Ah-ha,” she called, as she pulled it from its sheath. “Surrender to me, Light knight, and show me some humility for laughing at my inexperiences that I’m sure you purposely failed to inform me.” And her face was a crimson red.
While trying to suffocate the laughter, the Light knight said, “Aliyah, I think you’ve even forgotten how to use that. You can hardly hold it up.”
“I’m a bit rusty, but it’ll come back to me,” she said.
The Light knight once again burst out into a riot of laughter as rust came to cover her entire body.
“I’m a beautiful warrior princess,” she demanded in irritation.
And that’s exactly what she became, successfully choking off his laughter abruptly.
As a child, she’d always wanted to dress up when she came to the inbetween. She’d want to be a princess. She’d want to be beautiful. She’d want to feel as though she powerful and strong and undefeatable. Like a female version of Peter Pan, she’d look at this place as Neverland instead of what it really was. When her big brother admiration for him had turned into a child’s first crush, she’d come wearing a wedding dress, no longer strong and confident, but afraid and insecure. “Do you like my dress, Jacob?” she had asked quietly. “Do you think I’d make a beautiful bride?”
And he’d told her Yes, yes, he liked her dress and yes, she’d make a beautiful bride.
But then she’d looked up at him sadly, and said, “Would you love me and want to marry me when I am older?”
And there before him, as this place was past, present, and future, she had grown before his very eyes, and he’d gotten to see the glimpse of how beautiful she would grow to be, the child’s fuller features turned into a slimmer woman’s face with high cheekbones, that same pointy chin stuck out in both confidence and defiance, and the slim curvature of a developed female’s body accentuated with long golden-blonde hair, and he’d been struck speechless, seeing her like that.
But the glimpse hadn’t lasted long, because he’d ruined the moment and broken the chi
ld’s heart, just like that, by turning his back to her and reminding her that she was still but a child, and even if she wasn’t, it could never be.
Now, he was seeing her the same way he’d seen her then, so long ago, but no longer a child. This time, he felt his own heart breaking, because in her adult eyes, he could still see the pain of the child he’d hurt.
“Aliyah,” he whispered in wonder and adoration, and he bowed to her.
“If you ever speak of this in the outside world, I will kill you,” she said simply, while sauntering past him proudly.
“You have my word, Princess Aliyah.”
“What is it you wanted to show me?”
He returned to standing. “It’s this way. Follow me. Keep to the center, and if you hear the forewarning cry of the Lost souls, you run. There was once a time these paths were safe, but the Nothingness has spread so far, it’s beginning to breach our boundaries. Now, nothing and nowhere is safe.”
***
Dwayne drunkenly stumbled the path to her home. Everything had taken much longer than expected, the human body requiring so much and tempted by so many things. He’d greedily and thirstily consumed too much, and had to endure Danny’s body falling and passing out. Then the bathroom had been required, food and caffeine. It had taken far longer than he’d planned, so he spent his time chastising Danny for allowing his body to get old and weak and fat.
“We used to be able to drink until the sun came up, Danny. Snatch a couple hours of sleep and do it again. Now you’re worthless. You can’t handle anything. Your body hurts all over the place. You’re weak.”
“We’ve been walking for miles, Dwayne. I’m 62 years old.”
“If you hadn’t passed out back there like an old sop, we could have gotten a ride. Now it’s too late.”
“Then let’s find a place to rest for the night so that we can be strong when we face her. She’s got to be in her 40’s now.”
“Ah, but she’s not, Danny. She’s still young and sweet. Certainly not a child, anymore, but young enough. Our lives work. Our masterpiece. Now we just need to finish the final touches. We don’t have time to waste on sleep. We’ve already wasted enough. The greatest thing Aliyah has been good at is escaping. Tomorrow she could be gone, but tonight, Danny, my old friend, she is still here,” Dwayne said, looking up at the lighted window to her home. “Let’s do this, old timer.”
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