Reckless

Chapter 7 Part 5

Present Day

Character POV: Roxanne

I'm about a sixteen hour drive from the lake, which is plenty of time for me to feel the buzz and think that I probably should not be driving and yet keep driving, even when I am almost nodding off at the wheel. For the rest of the drive, my traitorous mind is too out of it to conjure Ariadne, which is what I wanted.

By some miracle, I make it to the lake in one piece and without killing anyone else on the road. I'd blame it on my centuries of drug and alcohol abuse, the tolerance that I have built up would not be possible for anyone else. For starters, the masses of substances that I consume would kill a human. It's only because of the immortal state of my magical existence that I am able to keep going like this. But, eventually, my luck will run out. I can be killed. But that's an issue for a future Roxanne, not the one who is stuck between two colliding worlds.

The trees here are a mix of conifers and deciduous trees, but the leaves are beginning to turn a shade of yellow in the latter. Autumn has only begun to arrive, bringing a crisp and cold morning and a somewhat warm afternoon. When Autumn arrives, this place will be a kaleidoscope of yellows, oranges, reds, and browns. Walking anywhere on the trails that now surround the lake would leave me hearing the crunch of dead leaves beneath my boots-- and I would need boots because all of the trails are unpaved. When the rains begin to fall, the trails turn to mud.

To think that all of those years ago, this place was where people died. But I guess if you live long enough and you go anywhere on this planet, someone was bound to die there. Still, to think of all of those women who were almost drowned or burned on this very spot, and now moms and dads are taking their kids to camp on the lake shore and fish in the lake for family bonding. It feels wrong in a way, like there should be a memorial to the women who suffered here, like there should be some solemnity to coming here instead of toasting marshmallows over a fire for s'mores.

There's another part of me that thinks the reclaiming of this place from the legacy of horror might be a good thing, might be what some of the women Ariadne and I couldn't save would have wanted for the world. For the darkness of the past to just stay that way, in the past. But others surely would have felt like their struggles were erased because it didn't fit the narrative that the human race wanted to push about who they were and what they were capable of. Every time I hear someone say that humans are inherently good, that insert bad thing from history here couldn't possibly have happened, and if it did it couldn't have been that bad, because humans aren't capable of bad things-- it makes me want to laugh and scream at the same time. How can you live in this world and yet be so far disconnected from reality? People suck, and people are great. No one is every purely good, but there are sure as hell people who are purely bad. The scars on my leg are a testament to that, one I can never quite forget because it's staring back at me every time I get dressed in the morning. Same as with my face. The only truly good things on this planet are dogs, and people treat them like shit same as they treat each other. That should say all there is to say about the moral quality of human beings.

And if humans are devils masquerading as mortals, it's only compounded when they are given immortal lifespans, and all the emotions that go with that constant loss and inability to connect with anything because you'll outlive it. Vampires and witches, we're both a little far off center. Vampires have it worse because nature did not decide to gift them with immortality, they steal it by taking lives. So nature struck back, taking their souls some say. I don't think Ariadne lost her soul, but she lost her sanity and that can look remarkably the same if we're only examining actions and not intentions.

When I pull up to the parking lot for access to the lake, it is empty. Everyone who floods this place during the summer isn't here. They're back at work or school or college, focusing on the everyday tasks of life, able to leave this place behind in a way that the survivors of this place were and will never be able to. Some places linger, while some slide away like smoke. It's all about what a place made you feel that determines if it stays with you, and sadly scars stay longer than smiles.