Curse: The end has only just begun

by Rich Hayden

  He never told it to do so, but his left hand descended, and, once it emerged, the appendage held the medallion of Vinzenz. Amil turned it over in his palm and stared into the violet swirl of its center. He looked to it, and then his eyes flowed to the door, and then back to the ornate disk once more. He read the number which was imprinted, 1373, and, then with a rigid ascendance of his arm, the mysterious coin was held up against the colorless barrier. Like an essence of purity entangled in violent resistance to an intercourse it was ill-equipped to refuse, the purple fog twisted and bent within the hollow. Slowly, it was contorted into a proper form, and, once its body had been fully mutilated, all that remained was a ghostly figure of indigo whose ephemeral shape revealed the door’s identity of 1373.

  Amil dropped the piece, and the suffering child of its belly was cast out, as the shapeless swirl returned, but he had already learned a truth never to be dashed from his mind. The token was a map. Its number revealed the source of the correct path to Isadora, and, thanks to Aphelianna and her wretched gift, Amil also had the key necessary to follow the map’s direction. He knew not if Isadora herself waited just beyond, but was certain that he had the means to reach her.

  There were no guards to stop whatever action he might fancy, as this door was undiscovered. Amil knew he should take responsible action and report his find. He should be wary to trust Duke Vinzenz, and disregard the temptations which stood before him. He should, at the very least, say goodbye to his friends and thank all those that had been so kind to him during his time in The Eternal City. There were a myriad of things that he should have done, but all that he could really do in that moment was to think of Ali. It was fleeting, but his mind then cast a thought to Jill. Conflict enveloped Amil as he stood before the door. He knew that his truck was waiting for him, as was Jill, just a bit further away. That was the way to go, the right path to take, but he knew that Ali was waiting as well. She was waiting for him, her only chance of salvation.

  He thought of her in the orchard and he thought of her on earth. Fully awake, he dreamt of her skin and of the lips that produced the brightest of smiles. He remembered their early days, and all the innocence that they each failed to see. He watched her as she tended to his every crippled need, and was humbled and weakened by the presence of her inexhaustible patience, which he could still feel. He felt her love, a love from perhaps the only soul who truly and deeply had ever loved him for all that he was, and all he was not. It was an emotion that transcended existence and all the barren planes of the afterlife. It was love, for Ali’s love, that Amil had stopped searching. Plucking his map from the gray soil around his shoes and sliding his key into place, he bid farewell to The Eternal City.

  Part 8. The End of Time

  Amil emerged into a land transformed. Moments before it might have held life and all sorts of activity, but forevermore, it could lay claim to nothing of substance. A red dusk colored the atmosphere, as whatever once existed had been reduced to smoldering piles of embers. The stumps of trees rose mere inches off the ground and were pointed at their tips, as the lick of fire had burnt them to near nothingness. The structures that had once dotted the land were baked into collapsed heaps of brittle matchsticks. The ground itself was warm, steaming with the smoke of exhausted fires, and even through his shoes, Amil could feel the radiant heat left behind from the infernal decimation.

  The scents of burnt wood and ignited earth filled his nose, and this scorched land was viewable in wavy segments, as the hot air coiled and rippled away. Crackles and pops were the only sounds, and other than the occasional blast of fire that emanated from a piece of charred wood, all motion had either fled this place or was incinerated. Flakes of black peppered the sky like diseased snow, and as they polluted the air, this macabre confetti found its way down Amil’s throat and into his lungs.

  He choked on the air and quickly concluded that whatever boon or assistance there may have been in this room, it was long gone. He stared ahead, into this wasteland of interminable ash, and grew weary of setting his eyes upon fresh depictions of ruin. If the singed air hadn’t already robbed him of moisture, he would have cried. He could bear no more of Aphelianna’s atrocities, and, as his eyes were forced to absorb all which had been burnt away to nothing, Amil gazed into a succinct example of his own soul.

  Without a step into this eradicated world, he turned and faced the door that had sent him to this somber space. He gave a feral stare to the barrier, and each eye displayed hatred for the two faces of the Janus who conceived the malevolent passage. As he spat on the wood, Amil didn’t hesitate to shove his key into its receptacle or to twist the knob open, but he did pause before crossing its threshold. He was gripped, frozen like a millennia-old mastodon trapped in ice and denied even the mildest respect from the laws of time. Like that great beast, he was not permitted decay. He was not extended the inalienable right of all things to simply disappear. He feared the revelation that awaited him on the other side, and for the first time, Amil came to fear the true magnitude of eternity.

  It was expected, but his heart sank all the same as Amil stepped not back into The Eternal City, but into a different room altogether. He knew it then; the truth was confirmed for him. He would never find his way back to the city. It was a part of his life now past, nevermore to be revisited, and like his earthly days with Ali, he had willingly forsaken safety and comfort yet again. It was all or nothing, Isadora or damnation, Ali or the jagged embrace of perpetual emptiness.

  Held within a circular room, Amil was numbed, but he came to terms with his decision and surveyed the environment. The room wasn’t very large, no bigger than a hotel lobby, but what it lacked in size, it greatly compensated for in substance. It was built almost entirely from marble. The variant colors were rich and bold, dark in their nature, and in the possession of a crystalline sheen which reflected from the swirls of stone. Sconces of intricate metallic creation hung from the walls in abundance. With shapes inspired by femininity, shades of stained glass covered the lights. A prismatic wash of color, like bands of a scattered rainbow, swam around the room and coated the marble in a brilliant glow.

  As Amil stepped into the room, he actually gave a thought to the dirt that rested in the treads of his shoes. He took to a delicate pace as he trod across the floor with a respectful consciousness. Everything was perfectly clean, impeccably polished, and buffed to a luster that he thought impossible to achieve by mortal hands. The brass fixtures beamed with magnificence more regal than gold, and to refer to the glass globes as stained felt tantamount to blasphemy. To use such a word seemed a disgrace. No, the colors in the glass were more like essences of purity unseen. It occurred to him that they likely were not constructed of simple glass at all. It appeared that the panes were in fact the differently hued sources from which all color is carved.

  Fixated upon the sconces above, Amil was made to stare at abstract versions of his reflection, as the sharp pitch of the ceiling had contorted his image. With a thousand unique expressions, these transitory doppelgangers gazed down at Amil and asked of him which path he would next take.

  Like an inverse carousel of unknown destinies, the room was lined with doors. They were much unlike many of those that Amil had passed though before. All were different, and all were splendid in their presentation. Some were circular, while only a select few took the shape of an ordinary door. One was tall and thin, but its nearest neighbor harbored the resemblance of an upturned triangle that was made to rest upon its point. The hardware of each was ornate and crafted from precious metals. Materials so assuredly rare that all that could be harvested had been exhausted in the building of the hinges and knobs. Jewels of glittering passion were beaten into the metals, and spectacular patterns of intricate lines and weaves were carved into the wood. In the center of each door curiously shaped windows had been placed, whose variant colors were solid, and of the same constitution as the lampshades overhead.

  Amil stared into an enchanting purple pane. As he studied the glass, w
hich resembled a question mark in reverse, he fumbled through his pocket and withdrew the map coin. He brought the object up to his eyes. On its backside where the 1373 had been, a simple inscription of 0 had taken its place. He immediately knew the meaning: door 0 was where he next needed to be, and one of these illustrious barriers was the pathway to his next destination.

  The shapes of the windows were as cryptic as the doors that held them and were equally enthralling. Like hieroglyphics penned from the hand of the divine, the arrangements of the windows, and the gorgeous complexions they possessed, enraptured him. He took time to admire each door and the radiant hues they offered, but this was purely for pleasure, as he didn’t check any of their identities with his charm. Amil already knew which path to take. He would have bet the whole of the afterlife upon it.

  Passing beyond splendid red, azure, and yellow, he walked the circumference of the room, whose absence of a baseboard yielded to a woven ring of metal leaf. He admired, and then ignored, noble green, orange, and hazel as he floated within this sacred temple. He maintained this joyful orbit until he approached a door whose window was black. It was a color so deep that as Amil looked upon it, he felt a tug, as though the glass wanted more than just his weightless reflection. The shape was a simple circle, a hole, most unlike the voluptuous nature of its peers, and it told of the expiration that lay beyond. Slowly, and only in a matter of procedure, did he press his medallion up to the surface of the door. Predictably, the victimized cloud formed the symbol of 0, and as he stood before the only door in the room that instilled in him a mighty fear, he reached for his key.

  Amil was not blind. His eyes functioned perfectly well, and with some intangible sensation, he saw all things clearly, and yet, nothing at all. Beyond the door, there was simply nothing more to see. All was black. All aspects of description had not been painted, stained or faded into darkness. And they were not even absent, but rather, everything, anything, was never there at all.

  Amil looked about himself, and he, too, owned a uniform black. His clothes, his shoes, and even his skin were awash with the complexion of night. Upon his flesh, these changes were not the result of the skin-deep persuasions of melanin, but something much deeper and far more complex. Whatever it was that befell him, this force took Amil apart piece by piece, down to the very basic and infinitesimal stages of his creation. He was left to float weightless among the empty air like a specter. Only now, he was far less substantial than a phantom. He was the dissolved embodiment of nothingness. And as he swam among that which never was, he was still cursed with the weight of his own thoughts.

  Without heft or definition, he drifted through space on merely the constitution of his mind alone. He saw as the dreamer sees. Abstract concoctions of memory and fantasy, all jumbled together, but beyond the faculty of recollection all the same. Sound came to him through the filter of a coma. And, as Amil lingered perilously near to the precipice of absolute oblivion, he was made keenly aware of the distance stretched between him and everything else. The greatest joy, the most abysmal crime, they were held at equal length from him. The unassuming description of a suburban street and the most fantastic nascence to be found within Aphelianna’s house were all removed, and placed as far away as galaxies only rumored to have once existed. Perhaps he had escaped the influence of Aphelianna and of death after all, but in doing so, Amil uncovered a greater curse. He was among the vast impossible, the literal Nowhere.

  If time had ever failed to impart its friction upon him, it had done so then. Amil felt not its drag, and he could sense no rapidity. He experienced no boredom, panic, or dread. He only continued to be, a fragile, barely-there entity of the truly lost. But, like any traveler, he inevitably came upon a destination. Perhaps it was not what he expected or even what he sought, but at the end of Amil’s wade through extinction, his eyes were made privy to what lay after forever.

  His reanimation went unfelt. He didn’t watch as his body returned to a tangible object, nor did he view specks of matter as they assembled themselves into something greater. A world did not spring up about him one piece at a time, rather, it just appeared. In one moment, Amil was a tiny part of a large brocade of absence. In the next, his feet were firmly planted upon stone.

  Blocks of twilight blue clung to one another and formed the wrung spiral of a staircase that began from nothing, and was tethered to more of the same. It descended into the invincible black, and once its coil dipped below the depths of eternity’s void, Amil was set upon a narrow walk of mahogany. The timbers were true in their flow, and as they lay flat-out like a plank off the edge of the world, they were escorted by railings of rope that bled starlight from the fibers. Into the dark unknown, he walked with trepidation. The floor below held a gloss, but it reflected nothing, for Amil didn’t really exist. He ran his hands over the luminescent ropes and traced their dips and swells, but he felt not the touch of thread or the blunt bodies of the posts that created the union, for they, too, weren’t really there. He walked on through the antithesis of creation, and knew this precisely and with a poignancy that made him weep invisible and tasteless tears.

  “That’s far enough,” a tired voice suggested.

  Amil’s body locked, like his feet were sunk in week-old concrete. He gazed ahead, down the boardwalk to Neverland, and there upon the edge sat a man of paltry stature. He held his back to Amil, and dangled his skinny legs over the side of the mahogany’s end. As he slumped into the unnatural posture of a shrimp, the rigid bones of his spine pushed at the cloth of his shirt, and a mat of gray hair weighed down his head like the crown of oblivion’s king. The flesh of his hands had collapsed, and their brittle shells perversely exposed every coarse vein as the fingers lay splayed out over the wood. He lurched forward, an act which noticeably brought him a considerable measure of pain, and then back again, as though bullied by some unfelt breeze. Even from a few paces behind, Amil could hear as the man wheezed. In silence, Amil gave thanks that the stranger hadn’t turned to look his way. He had no desire to look into the eyes of the one who was forever cursed to stare into eternal darkness.

  In a break from his normal operating procedure, Amil didn’t question the man as to who, or what, he was. He could only assume that this creature was once a god, but to confirm this fact was something that he had little interest in undertaking. He didn’t care to learn the man’s name, or of what series of worldly tasks were once his responsibility to oversee. The nature of his being, whether wicked or of the kindest benevolence, was something that Amil was content to leave unfounded. He dreaded the man’s face, and hesitated to engage him in conversation, but as Amil stared into that spined back of bone, cotton, and asthmatic strain, he felt the vibration of words as they escaped his throat.

  “How do I get out of here?” he asked, with quiet demand.

  “How did you get here?”

  “I died,” responded Amil, solemnly.

  “And so has everything else,” the voice explained, as the source of the words continued to gaze into the blackness. “This is The End of Time, the unavoidable future, and I’m all that’s left.”

  “Did Aphelianna cause this?”

  “Aphelianna? Hmm, it’s been so long since I heard her name. I can barely even remember the last time I saw her. I held her in my arms as she died. It came sometime after-”

  “Stop! Please, don’t go on,” Amil begged, as he felt wholly unequipped to handle the explanation to come.

  He had tripped into the last day, a day which had nearly forgotten the monstrous name of Aphelianna, and though this meant that Amil was too long gone, he had no fear of it. All things have an end, and this was the end of ends. But it remained so distant that it felt completely unreal, like a tragic accident in slow motion that he was never meant to see. He sensed that no version of life, death, or anything else of a trickier description had any right to stand where he did. And so, as he trespassed into the last eye-blink of existence, Amil knew that he must make haste away.

  “Then what is i
t that you want?”

  “Just tell me how to leave. I don’t belong here,” Amil said.

  “No, you most certainly do not. Nothing does, so make your exit,” the man directed, curtly.

  “How? I haven’t seen a door.”

  “Every door, every passage in every hall in every room, is at your back.”

  Amil had grown weary of what happened beyond the gaze of his eyes during his stay as Aphelianna’s guest. Things were never what they seemed, and, in keeping with this insipid riddle, another collection of puzzles had snuck up on him. As Amil slowly turned, he could almost hear the pestiferous laughter of Duke Vinzenz, but it was not the God of Fortune who was to blame. He had taken that medallion from Vinzenz of his own volition, and as he stared into endless rows of doors that hung neatly arranged among a backdrop of pure black, Amil realized that he didn’t need Aphelianna or her kind to suffer curses. He was plenty good at cursing himself.

  As he stood before the gateways to every moment in measured time, he withdrew his map stone and glanced at his next objective, door number 18514. With a fluttered sigh, he moved, and his feet left the boardwalk and found themselves planted upon the same empty space over which every door sat. He approached the first barrier in the first row and checked its name, 9009. Its neighbor read 76, the next was 67033347, and the door that floated next to it was numbered 32114. The random assortment revealed to Amil that the placement of the doors was just that, random. Door 18514 hide among the countless billions, and to find it, would require him to check each that he passed. He would have to walk back though time, ignorant of his place therein, but knowing full well all the while, that to traverse every last second of existence might be the price of getting one step closer to Isadora.