by Dan Pearce
Now I am with Samantha, for at least the next three and a half days, plus however long I can force myself to stay awake. Our relationship will almost certainly end with one of two things happening. Either I will make myself disappear, or the curse will do it for me.
Racheele suffered incredibly and died because I either did not understand or I did not believe the curse when it was first placed on me; I’m not sure to this day which is true. I do know she died because I did the very thing I was instructed by Tashibag not to do. I did the very thing she warned would bring me more pain than was necessary. I shared the details of my curse with Racheele. That will forever be on me. It will always be an encumbrance I refuse not to carry. It will always remain a heavy reminder of what will happen should I permit myself to hope that this time around, I can be more relaxed because things may just end differently.
This time around is, of course, different with Samantha compared to how it always has been. The curse is still very much in place. The mark on my chest is as clear today as it was the day Tashibag placed it on me. The circumstances surrounding all of it are just drastically different.
This was the first time I’ve loved a woman while the internet existed. It was the first time I’ve loved a woman when jet planes and motored vehicles could take me wherever I want to go. It is the first time I’ve loved a woman while I could easily communicate with others who were cursed, to try and somehow find answers together before time runs out.
I knew that if I did lose Samantha, and I probably would, it would be the first time I’ll have lost someone in a world where she will never be further away than the electrical glow of my computer screen. I didn’t know just yet if that was a good thing or not. I just knew it would be different.
Bzz. I was so lost in thought that it startled me when my phone suddenly vibrated against the ball of my foot. I snatched it back up and swiped it unlocked. A new message alert from Ashwin appeared at the top, which I quickly opened. “Aweh, old friend!” was his only response so far.
As I decided what the quickest route to avoiding small talk and getting straight to the point would be, those little animated bubbles began bouncing next to his name. Ashwin was typing out his next message, and what he was writing would send me frantically scrambling to catch whatever plane would get me to Peru fastest.
CHAPTER 8
After both Tashibag and Seth had gone, the neighbors who thronged me became infatuated with what they had just witnessed. As if I was an unfamiliar object, they poked and grabbed at my body while they took turns trying to recall each part of the curse and just what the new hieroglyph on my forearm signified. They talked amongst themselves as if the curse had turned me into something non-human and incapable of hearing their indiscreet discussions.
“Cain the Brother Killer deserves such a curse,” one very ugly woman chimed.
“Ten winters is no curse with any woman,” a very disagreeable man groaned. “I have never seen more than three.”
Others argued over whether or not the curse had included immortality.
After the immediate shock of it had worn, and I could take no more of their insolent obsession with it, I rudely excused myself and made the short journey home where Racheele sat leaned against the outer wall of our hut with Flor attached to her breast. That woman always loved soaking in the final oddments of each day’s sun.
I was unsure of what, if anything, I could tell her. I felt no physically different than when I left that morning. My skin felt no different where it was now marked.
The path home was mostly quiet and completely uneventful. The world around me seemed too strangely normal for something of such magnitude to have just happened. If it weren’t for the new mark that I studied dozens of times as I walked, I may have wondered if the whole ordeal was something I only dreamt.
“Why are you standing so far over there?” Racheele shouted across the small grassy field that divided us. I hadn’t realized I stopped walking and wondered how long I had been standing there watching the two of them in my hesitance, searching for whatever words should come next.
I made my way to where she was sitting.
“Why is a serpent painted on your chest?” she asked, noticing the mark immediately.
“Something happened in the village.”
“Obviously.”
“I am not really sure,” I honestly told her.
Racheele laughed in disbelief. “You don’t know? You were gone only a tiny part of the day.”
I shook my head, unintentionally reticent.
She laughed again. “Come now, Cain. Don’t be unusual with me. “Why do you wear that mark?”
I swallowed hard before answering and searched for some sort of benign half-truth. “It seems I have brought some kind of a curse upon us both from the witch Tashibag,” I said. I didn’t like that I didn’t understand it any deeper than that. I just knew terrible things had been promised concerning any woman, and Racheele must certainly be included. I sighed. I really didn’t know and needed to scrutinize it at a deeper level before I dared tell her another detail surrounding it.
“A curse?” she repeated. I nodded. “When did my Cain see the witch, and what reason would she have to curse us both?” She detached Flor from her nipple while she waited for my reply and held her opposite breast out to her. Our daughter eagerly took it in both hands and seemed oblivious to the conversation Racheele and I were having, as she latched on and focused on her meal.
“Someone told her of Abel’s fate.”
Racheele nodded, as if she should have already put those pieces together.
“Was it Seth?”
“No. He was there. He had no part in it,” I lied.
“Is he still angry?”
“What do you think? It’s going to take him some time.”
She could see my growing anxiety over my younger brother and changed the subject. “Well, let me see the mark.”
I sat down beside my family and positioned my body in such a way that she could examine Tashibag’s contribution more closely.
“How was she able to place such a mark upon you?” she asked, as she ran the familiar tips of her roughened fingers over it.
“She drew many other pictures in the sand. Much more than what is in this mark.”
Racheele watched my face in anticipation. “Then what?” she finally asked.
“I don’t fucking know. She whipped the pictures with her robe and the wind it created knocked me back,” I said. “That wind is what placed the mark on me. I’ve never seen magic like that.”
“Why would she do this?”
“I told you already, Racheele. Word traveled to Yarib that Abel was killed by my hand.”
She wasn’t satisfied with my bothered reply. “Yes, but what reason would she have to do such a thing? We both have seen others killed. She did not curse their killers, so why are you different?”
“I don’t know,” I calmly said, attempting to ditch my growing frustration before Racheele kept getting caught in its crosshairs. “I don’t know.”
“She came here to the village, though? That is where this happened?”
“Yes.”
“This is strange,” she said, shaking her head. “Very strange.”
I turned my shoulder away and leaned against the wall. “I know it is strange. Tashibag came riding upon an elk’s back. I stayed and watched everything she did. I did not expect this even as she did it.”
“Did the witch’s magic hurt?” she asked.
“Yes. It felt like fire as the mark burned into me.”
“It burned?” she said, pulling her hand away from the mark as if her touch might hurt me.
“Only for a moment.”
“Does it hurt now?”
“No.”
“The mark of Cain,” she soliloquized, as she reached up and again ran a finger across the serpent’s head. “It’s really very beautiful, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is.”
We both sat in silenc
e for a while. Racheele leaned her head against me. I felt calmed as I watched Flor nurse in her lap. Racheele had been far less affected by this news than I expected.
“So, tell me,” she finally said. “Besides a serpent added to his flesh, my Cain comes to me whole and in good health. Just what is this curse supposed to do besides leave a mark that all can see? It seems anything else is imagined.”
I ran a hand down the length of her arm and stared into the distant trees. “If his curse he shares with her, death shall come and take the girl.” I said it more to myself than to Racheele. Somehow, I clearly remembered every word Tashibag spoke during her incantation.
“What was that?” she asked, pulling herself away from me.
“A small part of the curse.”
“Say it again.”
“If his curse he shares with her, death shall come and take the girl.”
“Death will take me?” she laughed. “If you share your curse? What other words did she speak?”
I exhaled deeply. “I don’t know. I already said too much. I greatly fear telling you more.”
“Why?”
“What if death does somehow take you from me?” I asked as the sadness of the thought filled me. “What if death takes you from Flor?”
Racheele laughed, this time defiantly. “This is such silly fantasy. Listen to yourself. It was not I who killed Abel. The witch should have no reason I should die. It was she who healed me at one time, do you remember?”
“Of course, I remember.”
“And you already shared part of the curse with me, yes?” I nodded, regretting having done so. “And has death taken me?” I shook my head. “So, tell me the rest of this curse that the great and powerful witch has flicked upon you with the wind.”
“No.”
She laughed again. “She only did it to torture your mind.”
“Racheele. No. I find no humor in this,” I said as I wrapped my arms around my knees. “Obviously there is some truth to it, or how could this mark suddenly be fixed to my flesh?”
“Surely it will wash away in the river after some time passes.”
I cupped the mark with one hand. I knew it could not be washed away. The mark was part of me now. “You may be right. Still, I will not share more.”
Racheele pouted. “Fine then. I will learn it anyway from the women in the village if they ever decide to end their silence with me.”
“Do not ever ask them. I forbid it.”
“You cannot forbid me to use my own mouth.”
I looked at her in frantic anger. “I am forbidding this.”
“Then you tell me, Cain. I wish to hear it from your lips anyway so that you see there is nothing to fear. Magic does not work that way.”
The words of the curse swirled on repeat in my thoughts. “I won’t.”
Flor detached herself from Racheele’s breast and toddled into the tall grass at our feet. “I do not believe in such nonsense. A witch cannot control life and death from afar,” Racheele said. “Magic does not exist far from the hands that create it. I know enough about magic to know that.”
The more she insisted, the more I found myself believing her. Maybe she speaks the truth, I unfortunately let myself think. She reasoned with me more, and soon it seemed apparent that she must certainly be correct. In just a few encouraging statements, Racheele comforted my fear of the new curse and just how much danger it posed. There was no way for Tashibag to know if and when I was to tell Racheele. There was no way for her to order death upon the mother of my child. The witch had performed some visual trickery to place this mark upon my chest, nothing more. No man could live forever. Death couldn’t be controlled. Life couldn’t be extended. I looked upon Racheele. “I think you are right.”
“You see? You know I am right. So, tell me, Cain. What is the rest of this curse that brought my Cain back to me so troubled? We will laugh about it together and sleep beside our child when the night comes as we always do.”
“He took a life that was not his, and behind his valued woman hid.” I spoke the first words of the curse and paused to make sure nothing out of the norm started happening. Nothing did.
“Yes, my Cain took the life of a bad man,” Racheele said. “Those who know you know why you did it. Let’s not talk of it more.” I nodded in thankful agreement. “Tell me the rest,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes.”
I recited the curse in its entirety, as if I had said it aloud thousands of times.
“He took a life that was not his,
and behind his valued woman hid.
To be alone shall be his curse,
and never taste of death with her.
If 10 winters the mountains see,
with no woman he shall be.
When he sleeps on the fourth sun,
he shall wake and find them gone.
If his curse he shares with her,
death shall come and take the girl.
If she knows the end is near,
Death shall be her least of fears.
Any child his loins shall bring,
Will suffer pain from the same thing.
If any shall try to kill the man,
He shall die by nature’s hand.
And if this man should wish to die,
This witch only can end his life.”
I only paused as I reached the line about my child. Flor was currently happy and playful, hearing none of it. This was all absurd. I had nothing to fear, so I continued until the end.
After speaking the last words of the curse, I squinted my eyes expecting something to happen. Once again, nothing did. “That is quite a curse,” she said after I nodded, indicating that I was finished.
“Yes.”
“And I am still here.”
“Yes,” I repeated, breathing out the relief I felt by it.
“Come inside. I will cook the otter you brought home yesterday.”
I stood up, still a bit unsure of it all, and reached down to help her up. Racheele grabbed hold of my hand and smiled, but quickly yanked it away and gasped. She began squirming in discomfort and clutching at her abdomen. “Cain, there is…” was all she said before she doubled over and began writhing and screaming out in agony as some sort of incredible pain overtook her.
“Racheele, tell me what is wrong!” I demanded. She could not answer. The terror in her expression grew along with the loudness of her screams. I bent over and pulled her hand from her stomach and held it tightly between my own. I grew even more horrified as I noticed her hand had become dry and wrinkled like that of an incredibly old woman. “Racheele!” I cried again, and forcefully lifted her head by the chin so that she faced me. The skin on her face was also now dry and old, and it was wrinkling at an alarming rate while I could do nothing but panic and watch her fall apart. Her painful screams continued, though they became softer as her vocal cords could not keep up with whatever trauma was happening to her body.
Clouds of white formed over her eyes. Their brown irises, which I had affectionately studied so many times, became still drained of color. Her body became still. Her weight settled into itself. The pain and agony disappeared from what was left of her face. Death had officially taken her.
“Racheele, Racheele, I whispered as I squeezed her hand in mine. The entire hand snapped off at the wrist and broke into several dry pieces in my grip. Horrified, I dropped them to the ground and pulled my other arm from behind her rapidly disintegrating body. Gravity brought her down with a cracking thud as she broke apart into several large fragments. Those fragments containing her face and breasts were the first part to crumble completely, followed by her limbs. The rest of her crumbled, turning itself into fine dust, and within moments the woman I loved was nothing more than a pile of clumpy ash at my knees.
I looked at it all in honest disbelief. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. Surely it was all some terrible and dreadful dream. My Racheele. My Rachee
le. I scooped up handfuls of her remains and held them to my face, willing it to somehow not be real. Tears I didn’t feel forming fell into my hands and were absorbed into her dust’s dryness, creating tiny balls of hardened powder where they landed.
“Mamá?” It was Flor.
I had forgotten about her completely and didn’t notice her wander over at some point during the chaos. I didn’t know how much her 2-year-old eyes had just witnessed or how much her 2-year-old brain understood. “Mamá,” she repeated, as she clutched my leg and stared at the dusty heaps that were now her mother. “Where Mamá?” she said to me again, with escalating confusion. She lifted her arms high in the air toward me, wanting to be lifted and comforted.