by Dan Pearce
The human memory is a strange thing. We each believe we have a more or less flawless idea of what happened in our pasts, yet the connections in our minds are far from perfect. I think back to certain events, and I recall vivid emotions and details with perfect clarity, but it doesn’t mean I am correct. Something negligible I remember as orange may have been red and was so insignificant at the time that I did not store away the information. Then, as time went on and I thought back to it, I filled in the missing gaps with memories, which to me are accurate and real. What was red was red, even though it was actually orange. People really have no idea just how often they implant details into their favorite – and least favorite – memories.
Language is another interesting facet of our memories. The language I spoke when I killed Abel is dead. The language we spoke in Itzbi is dead. Only on extremely rare occasions do I even hear words in any language that sound as if they could have derived from my native tongue. None of the things that happened in the beginning happened in English, yet I’ve used English for so long now that it has become the primary language in my thoughts. All but a couple of my earliest memories eventually translated from language to language as well, until I actually remembered them happening in a language that wouldn’t even exist for millennia. For that reason, I acknowledge that my memory is imperfect, and that this entire history is just my current perception of things that may or may not have happened, or been said, the way I tell them.
Eroding neurons make recalling past events increasingly difficult for most people as they age. Ironically, my memory has evolved over time. My cells somehow don’t erode, and so I have never been faced with such a struggle. The longer I have lived, the more I have learned the process of permanently holding onto the information I want to keep. I have trained myself to find and recover memories I didn’t realize were lost. I have trained myself to look at any scene and memorize it fully. Eventually, I even taught myself how to keep from storing certain memories at all. In other words, I am able to remember far more of my past life now than I could thousands of years ago. I am able to remember past events with a somehow increased sense of clarity.
There are a couple accounts in The Old Testament, which I can assure you happened, and not much differently than how they were reported. I was there when Daniel was cast to the lions. I was living in a nearby city when Noah built his boat, but he didn’t build it to escape a great flood. He built it to escape dangerously rising sea levels, and a land full of criminals and thugs who were putting his family and his livelihood in jeopardy. I assure you that if the entire Earth had flooded, I would remember treading water, and I certainly would have remembered drowning because I have suffered that enough times to know it is one memory I cannot choose to forget.
Only a few times did I ever read The Old Testament and think, that’s impossible. Did Lot’s wife somehow turn into to a pillar of salt? Why not? Something hauntingly similar happened to both the first and second women I loved. Did Elisha successfully command a bear to appear out of nowhere and kill 42 asshole children? Who am I to say otherwise? I’ve seen necromancers control bears and I’ve watched innocents die as a result of an energetic force that undoubtedly exists in this world.
Mankind has always been desperate for concrete reasons why all supernatural, spiritual, or mystical events occur. Why are some people able to be healed, while others aren’t? Why do some have the ability to tap into those realms and most don’t? Why do some people see spirits, others remember past lives, and others conjure what they want into their lives?
The concept of a singular controlling deity who doesn’t want us to have all, or even most of the answers was the easiest ideology for mankind to grab hold of, even when every section of the planet put its own twist on what they declared was truth. As I already told you… I have never seen or talked to any God. I simply believe that some other realm exists. It seems that realm is navigated and manipulated through energy, and that the energy has ostensibly infinite potential and possibility.
I have seen so many versions of gods created that I give little thought anymore to whom or what any person chooses to place their faith, so long as they use that faith to propel them toward satisfied happiness.
I have watched mankind place their faith in hundreds of different gods now, most of whom this current world wouldn’t know. I’ve seen masses latch onto broad declarations of deity, and I’ve witnessed individuals define what deity is for themselves. I have seen endless religions come and go. I’ve seen people filled with goodness and people filled with horridness validate their faith by wrapping it into the same beliefs as each other. Intellectuals and dimwits do the same. To me, the notion that intelligence – or lack thereof – has anything to do with a person’s faith is among the greatest farces of all. I’ve seen very smart people do very stupid things in the name of faith and personal belief.
I can’t tell any person what truth is. I can’t pass along the ideas or stories I hear secondhand. I can only speak for the unexplainable and miraculous events I personally witnessed in the span of the almost 200 lifetimes I have somehow lived. Those events have been many, most of which there is not space to account for in any one writing. At times I would go years without witnessing anything that seemed to be founded in magic or mysticism. Other times it seemed that no matter where I looked, or where I traveled, the improbable and the disturbing kept happening before my very eyes.
Such was the case around the time Annia died.
I found a secluded spot not far from Ackgri’s home and let myself collapse and attempt to process everything that just happened. After enough of the initial shock had worn-off and I could think at least semi-clearly, I embarked on the dismal journey back to Paigurn.
As I walked, I juggled unassuageable guilt over the current state of my emotions. Why hadn’t I yet shed a single tear in all of this? Why did I seem to only feel anger and not sadness? Why was I not immediately stricken with impossible grief? I felt guilt for what happened, and more guilt for my mind’s continuing attempt to blame either Ackgri or Abel for it all. On top of those feelings, I felt renewed guilt for what happened to Racheele. The further from Buh I traveled, the angrier and more bitter I became, which caused those old depressed parts of my mind to take hold.
In the end, I selfishly decided I could not bring myself to face Annia’s children. As one of my greatest regrets to this day, I took the coward’s way out and sent word by way of messenger to Annia’s sister once I reached the next village. My heart became so terribly broken on that journey that I did not somehow care whether those kids grew up without ever getting the answers they would need to someday bring them closure. I should have gone back to Paigurn and, at the very least, made sure those kids were setup to be properly cared for. But I didn’t. Instead, I convinced myself so much of the danger I posed to all others, and I rationalized my actions into a state of self-assigned pathetic nobility.
There was nothing noble about it. While I very much regret not taking care of those kids, I have come to forgive the action, as well. Everything I had come to believe was real and could hopefully last had just shattered. My hope in the future had just been sucked out of me in a moment. My heart felt as if it had been mashed into a thick and ugly paste.
My heart was broken, and I did what I did.
In my experience, a truly broken heart – especially one drowning in a sea of regrets for what might have been done differently – hurts more than any broken bone ever could. A broken heart takes far longer to heal, as well. Broken hearts cause good, and even incredible people to take actions which completely contradict their true character. Any time there is a flood of conflicting emotion, rational thought becomes all but impossible for any person. The aftermath of Annia’s death was the second time I would learn this lesson, and I have had to learn it many times since.
Eventually, I did return to Paigurn under the pusillanimous covering of night, only long enough to obtain my Book of What Once Was. Those portraits of Racheele and Flor were
the only thing that made sense to me just then, and I could not leave them behind. Once I had them in my possession, I added a new portrait of my sweet and wonderful Annia, whose face would join the others to help me sleep during that time of incredible despair.
Before I ever arrived at Paigurn to retrieve that book, and three human lifetimes after I was very first cursed, I finally witnessed just what macabre fate awaited any person who would make an attempt on my life. I knew the words of my curse before that journey home. I knew the promise contained therein. I had no idea what kind of death or expiry might await any such man – or woman as it turns out. I would have been thankful to never need to learn that lesson, but I cannot control what others choose to do with their agency. It seems most of us, at different times in our lives, find ourselves the unlucky wanderers to cross the troubled paths being traveled by others.
The group of women who ambushed me on that journey called their leader Duga. It is the only clue I ever got as to who any of them were or where they might have come from.
It happened several weeks after Annia’s death, when my depression had reached a consuming low. At as slow a pace as I had walked in all my prior wanderings, my eyes remained pointed at the ground as if attached to it by strings. It is difficult to describe how I felt during a time when I wished only to cease existing. To humans who cherish and guard their lives, an individual’s darkest thought processes can’t fully be understood if they have never experienced thinking the same thoughts. Each day the sun set, my melancholy grew just knowing the sun would probably rise the next day. The chirps and chatters of the uncaring happy squirrels and birds in the trees increased my bitterness. Minutes took hours to pass. I daydreamt of nothingness, and how peaceful it would be to suddenly have no functioning mind, or the thoughts that go with it, to continue plaguing me.
This is the state in which I found myself when Duga and her gang of wild women leapt out of seemingly nowhere. I had just made my way up a path which led me over a hilltop through a maze of giant boulders and rocky terrain. Whatever dark thoughts I was lost in quickly came to an end as a high-pitched war cry screeched in the air above me. I was slammed to the earth by a swift and silent force. Judging by the voice, it was a woman that now stood perched on my back. Others quickly joined her and pinned my limbs and face down as well. Once they had me secured, the woman stepped down from me and squatted to look me in the eyes. It was the first I had even seen any of them.
The woman was as close to a Neanderthal as still existed then, and I had only seen one such primitive person in my wanderings before. That particular man turned out to be more shy than a wolf, and he hastily fled as soon as he caught a scent of me in the wind. At the time, I was just extremely happy to know that I was still on an Earth that hosted other people.
This woman had many of the same features as the man I once encountered. Her naked body was covered with course and sparse hair. She had a long-armed, hurried, and forceful hunch to her posture. Her frame was thick and oddly shaped. She communicated with the others using a rudimentary vocabulary intermingled with grunts and closed-tooth whistles, though she had also learned some of my language. Their group was purely female, which I’m guessing is exactly how they wanted it – and maneuvered it – to be.
The woman grabbed a handful of my hair and violently yanked my head upward. “I Duga, what name you?”
I spat away the dirt that crammed my lips. I didn’t have the energy to feel the ongoing fear I probably should have. If anything, the timing of it all kind of pissed me off. “I am Cain,” I grumbled.
Duga dropped my head back harshly against the ground. That pissed me off even more. “Cain. Cain is man alone. No weapon, Cain. No other man walk with Cain. What you have for me now, Cain that you stay not dead?” She eagerly grabbed the leather bag I had been toting and shook it until the supplies emptied from it. A couple of fish wrapped in fig leaves and a few strips of dried meat didn’t seem to appease her requirements. “Nothing more have you for mighty Duga?”
I struggled against my captors, completely in vain. “I have nothing. Leave me be, woman.”
Duga hopped toward me using her hands and feet in the manner of an ape. “What is?” she said as she tugged at the leather strap of the necklace holding Annia’s glowing blue stone, which I was now wearing. The strap pulled tightly against my neck, the stone pinned between me and the ground below.
She began yanking against it and I felt the stone slip-out a little more with each tug. “No,” I loudly insisted in sudden desperation not to lose the only thing I had left of my Annia. A jolt of adrenaline caused me to flail with the force of three men, and I temporarily imbalanced the women pinning me enough that I was able to free three of my four limbs. This, in turn, filled them with their own jolts of adrenaline, and they instantly immobilized me again, this time with greater force. “No, you must not take it. It is all I have left of her!” I angrily screamed.
Duga scooped together a handful of dirt and pebbles from the ground and jammed it hard into my mouth. Like a Chinese finger trap, the more I struggled against them, the more trapped I seemed to become. Duga appeared in my view once more and held a sharply pointed bone fragment to the tip of my nose. “Cain give Duga it now.”
“No,” I said after I spluttered the brunt of the dirt and rocks back onto the ground. “Take all of it but leave me this one thing.”
Duga shrugged, probably unable to understand most of what I said, then hopped out of sight. Moments later, I felt her bone stab through the skin on my lower back as she jammed it into me. That first stab was the worst. A giant bolt of painful electricity shot through my spine and caused my back to arch in an impressive full body spasm. “Cain die now,” she said as she plunged the bone into me once more and pulled it back out again. She did this repeatedly. With each stab, I felt another major organ meet the tip of her weapon, and life slowed so much that I seemed to feel her bone break through each individual layer of me with each and every stab. Once she decided I was sufficiently wounded, she whistled to the others and they released my limp body so that it could bleed out and take my final breath along with it.
With the help of the largest woman in their group, Duga rolled me so that I was supine. A pool of bright red blood creeped its way from beneath me, slowly inching toward their feet. She reached down and grabbed hold of the glowing stone and broke the leather free from my neck. She held it up to her apparently short-sighted eyes and became mesmerized by the stone’s glow. “Magic,” she said. “Magic for Duga.”
I was about to die, and I knew I was about to die. When my blood was draining out of me, I never thought my curse would save me. The curse never crossed my mind at all until Duga suddenly dropped the stone, and it landed with a tiny splash in my spreading blood.
Her hands clenched unnaturally, as if they were trying to somehow remain attached to her. Her failing fingers soon reached to grasp at her own throat as she began choking and gurgling. The other women, four of them in total, rushed to her aid and frantically grunted and yelled in their primitive language at her in an attempt to offer any sort of aid. The brute of the group soon began choking as well, and within a minute they all were clutching desperately at their own throats, searching for access to oxygen.
I only saw a tiny portion of what happened to them next. Duga was brought to her hands and knees, her face centered almost directly above mine. The muscles in her forehead began spasming, and her eyes expanded like tiny balloons being filled with too much air. Her tear ducts began producing blood-swirled tears of stress, which I felt drip against my beard. As this was happening atop me, I heard the sound of thumps followed by thumps as the others fell to the earth as well. My vision began to darken. Just before I blacked-out, Duga bit hard through her own tongue, biting it clean off. It fell from her mouth as she collapsed onto me, and it was at that point that I lost enough blood for unconsciousness to set in.
I don’t know how much later it was when I awoke from it all. Hours at minimum. The sun had trave
led to the opposite end of the sky, and the great boulders surrounding us had begun casting long and chilly shadows.
I was fully discombobulated for a moment before my mind finally cleared itself enough to hear the squawk of a crow inches from my face. The heavy weight of a woman’s cold head rested heavily atop my own, the taste of her thickened blood was overly present in my mouth. The woman’s hair was frigid and damp, and it blocked my vision. I was thirstier than most will ever experience, and a dull and warm discomfort radiated through my abdomen. I finally became aware enough to remember the details of Duga and her ambush. The realization that it was a dead woman pinning me down caused a renewed surge of adrenaline, and in less than a moment I had freed myself and stood atop all the carnage. As I stood, a startled murder of crows took flight.
Duga had died, collapsed on her knees. Her chin and neck were caked in blood where the stump of her tongue had bled down. There was no sign of the tongue I had seen her bite off; a crow must have carried it away. The other four women also lay dead around her, their eyes all having been pecked out of their sockets by scavenger birds. A dreadful amount of blood covered the spot I had just vacated. That terrible thirst I first felt upon awakening intensified to the point of being painful. I knew my body needed water to replenish my blood supply.