The Horizons Series - Prologue

Chapter 1 - Epilogue

 It happened during the springtime, under a clear blue sky. Standing in a field of purple flowers that stretched beyond the horizon, a decision was made for the second time.

The first decision trapped him in an infinite fall. But this one left no room for interpretation; with a punctured heart, and eyes devoid of love, everything he was came to an end.

Years before, after the first choice, the sky rained lightning amidst tears of grief.

But the second time around, the world was quiet. It was a held breath: Terrified, Desperate, Hopeful. Anxiously waiting for confirmation that he was no longer here. The flowers swayed gently in the breeze, basking in warm sunlight. And up above, a sky the brightest blue I'd ever seen like there were no Gods up there who loved him.

Then there was a chiming.
The sound at the end of the world, he used to call it. The sound of someone he cherished reaching the epilogue, the end of their lives.

That tiny bell's sound filled the silence, soft and tender. And he smiled as his dreams came true.
That's when the cheering started. The people of that world threw their bearings into the air—the beginning of a month-long celebration. Finally, the Catastrophe was dead; Starpoint's prophecy had been fulfilled.

I woke up with cold sweat plastering my clothes to my skin. A headache ripped through me like shrapnel grenades exploding in my skull. Gasping for air, I quickly sat upright.

A fit of dry heaving, coughs intermittent, overwhelmed my body. And most of all, it was cold. If the sunlight streaming through these open windows wasn't burning my eyes, the concept of heat would have sounded like a joke.

In the walls of my empty mind was a sloppily carved message: [I'm sorry for making all the wrong choices. We'll never see the orange sky in the way we wanted to, but that's no reason to let our dream die. When things get hard, take a break and look at the sunset; maybe you'll catch a glimpse of us. Tell our friends we love them. Forever is never over. I love you.]


I wasn't allowed a single moment to process this, as the door to my right had swung open. A middle-aged woman with freckles dotting her cheeks complained while entering the room, "If you were here, you should have said something, you little bast-"

Her eyes doubled in size when she saw me — in all my glory, a pitiful mess.

The pain: mental, physical, emotional, was crippling. Especially when I looked into her dark brown eyes. Enchanting eyes enchanted with vigilance, but such vigilance wasn't aimed at me. Instead, it was a feeling carved into them over a lifetime.

"Um... who are you?" I asked.

The fair-skinned woman took off without a word. Her footsteps receding down the hallway formed a pit in my stomach. Her presence felt like a reunion... one I might have believed would never come.

But to my satisfaction, she returned bearing a glass of water. The familiar-looking woman forced it to my tightly shut lips and commanded, "It's water. Drink."

Nothing smarterer than drinks from a stranger.

Regardless, I trusted her; she had that air about her. I accepted a single taste and soon, she was fetching glass after glass to satisfy my insatiable thirst.

"No more." I went through the last of my coughs, "Tell me what's going on."

"Nuh-uh," she responded, "You're not fooling anybody, little miss mighty. Drink one more glass while I go out and fetch someone who can give you the answers you're looking for."

As much as I wanted to protest, the prospect of an explanation bought my silence. At around my fourth glass of water, my awareness returned enough for me to question my location, that woman's identity, and even worse... mine.

Her confident, army-like gait carried her through the door, and I was once again alone in this comfortable room.

The bedroom was large enough for a single person. But whoever lived here dedicated half the space to books. Seriously, apart from a queen-sized bed, a dresser, and a wardrobe at the foot of said bed, the room was purely literature. Compressed on the shelves lining every corner were books of every genre. Colourful ones crammed between dark and dreary-looking ones. Tiny kids books haphazardly thrown in the spaces between erotica.

If this was the room of that freckled beauty, sharp jawline and mistrusting eyes, then there was some warmth under that no-nonsense exterior. After all, how many adults were young enough to read children's stories?

Then again, it could have been my room. But the general atmosphere didn't resonate with me.
On the sparkling clean nightstand was a book layered with dust and cobwebs. The contrast caught my eye, and my curious fingers followed behind.

I blew away the top layer of dust, releasing tiny particles back into the air.
Achoo!
Its cover was a nostalgic blue, littered with wispy, textured clouds in a familiar pattern. The title was a small, confusing font. With some difficulty, I read, "Love is Immortal, To you, my Heart: Helping Your Young Ones Through Grief."

"Oh..."

And there was no author.

On the bright side, this room wasn't mine; no way I had a kid. The dark side, however, caused a slight pain in my heart. Despite its apparent age, the pages were pristine. There were no smudges, smears, or dog ears, and the string bookmark rested idly on the cover. I couldn't shake the feeling I was the first person to open it.

When I skipped to the last page, a brown envelope fell into my lap. There was no address and no name for the recipient. The only writing was in that same weak-willed font. It said, [To you, the Immortal.]

"The Immortal," I mouthed.

It was sad. They probably did feel like that, didn't they? To people with a time limit, everyone else might as well be immortal. Hopefully, their child was doing alright. Hopefully, they were immortal.

Suddenly, there was a voice in the darkest parts of my consciousness. My muscles tensed, hands gripping the sheets until my knuckles went white. While the voice itself was quiet, each word was like a blade piercing through my mental defences.

[I don't want you to worry about dying.]

Immersed in a distant memory, where I lay on this bed with a boy on each side. On my right was a comfortable warmth. And on my left, a terrifying chill.

The orange sunset rays streamed in from outside my vision, creating shadows against the wall. My gaze was fixed to the ceiling, leaving these two out of sight.

After a long pause, the voice continued, having attached meaning to the promise he was about to make. He took a deep breath to strengthen his resolve, releasing it all at once before making his absurd vow:

[As long as I'm alive, you're immortal.]

A smile crept upon my lips. Only one person would say something like that. Their name...
It was...

Drip.

The voice disappeared. My smile disappeared.

My eyes widened at the red liquid on the back of my hand. I covered my nose to stop what my frantic heart assumed was a gushing river. But that was it—a lonely drop of blood, sending shivers down my spine.

SLAM!

My head snapped to the right, where a funny-looking guy stood at the slammed-open door.
He was clearly around my age, but grey hairs littered his natural black like weeds. The woman from before, her eyes were sharp, as if glaring was all they knew how to do. But his eyes were soft and simple, lacking the slightest edge in their gaze.

He sighed deeply, saying, "You look like shit."

Wow, this guy knew how to make a good impression!

"You look like super shit," I responded.

He rolled his eyes, locking the door before flopping onto the right side of the mattress. The stranger, who apparently had no home training, lay face down spread eagle with no concern for his spindly arms and legs that infringed upon my personal space.

"Mrmgh mgh mghmgh mghk mh m m?"

"What?" I asked.

He raised his head. "I said," but engulfed his face in the mattress again. "Mrmgh mgh mghmgh mghk mh m m?"

It was kind of cute, but very annoying. "Yeah, 'cause I can totally hear you face down in the bed."
I grabbed him by the sleeves of his sweater and arranged him face up in my lap. "Talk again."

He was lucky I responded like that. Any other girl would have screamed the moment he locked the door, much less pull him into their lap like this. Instead of worshiping my benevolence, the ungrateful wretched groaned. "You don't remember, but understanding me when I talk like that is one of your talents."

My confusion made him groan a second time. "What I said was, 'Aren't you gonna ask me who I am?'"

"Knowing you, you can't wait to find out what's going on," he added.

My gaze was drawn towards his charcoal drawing eyes, like open windows into the soul. These open windows made it terribly easy to understand his nature. If his intentions were negative, I would have known—anyone would have known. That's why I knew he was stressed. The bags under his eyes, his gaunt cheeks, the grey strands of hair; this guy's body didn't know how to keep a secret.

I scoffed. "You calling me nosy?"

"Is that a rhetorial question?" He meant rhetorical. "You're nosy as shit."

"Is that so? You say it like I'd know what that means."

"It means you always have to know what's going on. Both you and-" The familiar stranger's jeer fell off halfway through, his bright and honest smile replaced by a dark expression.
Words like 'melancholy' and 'depression' were incompatible with his simplicity, but his emotions were deeper than the word 'unhappy'. And the question felt important, somehow. So I asked, "What word best describes the way you're feeling? 'Melancholic' or 'Depressed'?"

Without missing a beat, he responded. "Two of my friends, one being my best friend, are in a mental hospital; Another two are about to run away together and won't let me talk them out of it; One is drinking himself to death from the guilt of killing his best friend twice; And the last one's been missing since we came back."

"I don't know what the hell 'megaphonic' means but all in all, I'm sad as shit."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're anticlimactic?" All those problems and that's what he chose to describe himself. I smiled shamelessly, but he didn't seem to mind. "Your friends sound like real pieces of work. If I were you, I'd drop those shackles yesterday. "

"No. You wouldn't."

"Yes, I wouldn't- would! I mean would!" What was that all about? For a moment it's like he was looking right through me. "Anyways, I'm not nosy because I already know what's going on: my memories are gone and I'm the one who wiped them."

He sounded like another weight was added to his shoulders.

"Did the mean old lady downstairs tell you that?" The simple boy shouted, unable to control his emotions like the simple boy he was. He wasn't right about that last thing, by the way. It was simply a slip of the tongue.

"No, it's just... context clues. " Jeez, I must've forgotten how to speak, too. Some parts of my vocabulary were taking a while to get back to me, so it was hard not to trail off in my sentences. "That woman and I, were we close before? I think looking at me makes her feel not great."

"That woman is your least favorite mother-in-law," he said. "You might butt heads with her once or twice, but don't be too hard on her; she's been through enough to justify her craziness." The familiar stranger paused, his gaze abstracting across an impossible distance. "Her house is empty now."

"Mother-in-law... Am I old enough to have one of those?" Or... more than one of those?
He shook his head, an extremely solemn gesture. "Different time, but that's besides the point."

He got up and opened the door, fetching a chair from another room slightly down the hall from this one. While his noodle arms struggled with the chair, I caught a glimpse of a bunk bed in the corner of that one, both parts made with some sort of permanence, as if they'd long seen sleeping children.

After struggling back with the stool, he sat leaning against the door. I maybe should have taken this as a red flag, but after seeing him lose to the chair, I was ninety-nine plus one percent sure I could take him in a fight.

"Is there a reason you moved?"

He ignored my question and followed up with his own. "What else do you know?"

The laughter building inside my stomach almost blew a hole in me. This clown was trying so hard to be serious and on-topic. Though when I remembered the few contents of my memory, the jovial feeling disappeared. "There's a letter inside my head that reads like a suicide note and a... photopicture."

"A note?" His falsely composed exterior shattered when he heard that. "What does it say?"

"Not telling," I said. "Next question."

That letter was a bit too intimate to broadcast out in the open like this. An open person like him wouldn't be able to wrap his head around the concept of secrecy. Rather than understanding, his reaction would be something between disappointment and outright anger. Not that it mattered... I barely knew the guy.

"What about the picture, then?"

"Huh?"
"The 'photopicture'. Do you wanna tell me about that?"

"Umm... no." Well there went any reason to doubt this guy's intentions. "Unlike the note, the picture is incomplete, I think. There are nine silhouettes orbiting this guy in the centre. I don't have the words for it yet, but he's very... sun-like. Pulls them close and kind of... lights them up, y'know?"

Recognition slowly crept into his eyes. My old friend nodded slowly as he uttered a name.
Countless incomprehensible memory fragments appeared in the background of my mind. They were like tiny puzzle pieces, playing lonely pixels of a larger screen.

And with their arrival were searing, pulsing pains at hundreds of locations in my brain. It was like acupuncture without an anesthetic, but aimed to kill rather than heal.

I bit my lower lip to counter-pain it. An involuntary gasp finally refilled my vacuum-sealed lungs. Pushing through my body's desperate panting, clutching at my frantic heart, I repeated the name he uttered with lamentation. "Lith Jeden, the light of the universe."

"What's wrong? Do you need me to-"

"No! It's just-... nothing. I'm fine."
I looked over, only to be met with a new problem. Squinting made a tiny difference, but not enough to make me feel better.

"Can you come back here? When you're all the way over there, the world is all hazy." I asked.
Every inch of distance between us was blurrier than the last. My friend was no more than ten feet away, yet his features were indiscernible. With the aid of those random, tiny memory fragments, it hit me.

"You moved on purpose, didn't you? So I can't tell when you're lying to me." I blinked repeatedly with my drastically worsening vision. Having no memories to pull from, I almost thought this was normal, but those inside open-window eyes, I sensed guilt.

He said nothing.

"Silence is the same as lying. Someone's missing from that picture, and that's why I'm here," I said.

My hands vibrated with the chill that ran up my spine. A cold sweat accompanied by red-hot hatred, but not the kind that drives people forward. The feeling hid meekly in the shadows of my cowardice.

"They're supposed to be in that picture, too," I said, "But they messed me up so badly that the only way forward was to forget what they did to me."

His lower lip quivered slightly, confirming those suspicions.
On the bottom right corner of the image was a short phrase. Written in the most enchanting handwriting I thought could ever exist were five words.

[A picture of the universe.]

On the rightmost side of the group was a silhouette that looked just like slenderman here. He was doing a weird handshake with one of the three girls, another of whom was hugging the varsity guy, and the third whose arms were folded, glaring at the space of the missing silhouette.
If this guy was that close to the old me, then he knew who I was talking about. Him and that person, they might have been best friends who played together, laughed together, and fought together. Killed together, plotted against me together, and hurt me together.

No. Not just them; it was the entire group.

When I needed most the concept of 'friendship' and 'love' , eight people abandoned me—their payment for my endless sacrifice. That's the real reason things turned out this way.
I gripped the linen sheet until my knuckles were white, head down with teeth gritted as part of an ugly expression.

"But it's fine. Thing is, I don't want to know," I declared. "Don't tell me who they are, or about my past, or why you have the world's weight in those bags under your eyes..." In the middle of my sentence, I was surprised by the coldness of my hands. I released the fabric, causing color to return to my ghostly pale fingers.

This pained and vengeful expression wasn't mine to make. If the past me were here, or if I had all my memories, she would instead, or I would, say something like this: "I'm not mad at you guys, just disappointed. And whether that's in you or myself, I don't know. But If you are sorry for what you did, then there's one thing you can do for me."

I turned to the source of the soft orange hue. Through the open windows, the sun was being smothered by orange clouds with metallic gray undersides. The evening color softened my heart, almost bringing a teary blur to my worsening vision.

"Just disappear so I can watch the sunset, David. That's all we ever wanted."

David Vardo. The name popped into my head while I was talking.
Being here with this guy, talking about things related to my past, was bringing back what I lost. The return of my memories. Whether the process would be like a stalactite drip on a sheet of paper, or a tidal wave rushing in all at once, the one difference would be the speed at which I lost my mind.

Without a word, he got up and turned the doorknob.

My eyes drifted to the brown envelope in his back pocket. He must've taken it when I wasn't paying attention.

"Wait!" I exclaimed. "That's not yours. Give it back."

"You're talking like it's yours, though. It's not."

"Give it back, David!" I wasn't sure why that letter was making me so anxious. "You're choosing not to give it back to me, so technically getting hit would be a choice you made"

David scoffed. "Last time you said that was when we were kids. Your mother-in-law told me to get this while I'm here. It's a letter her sister wrote to someone who passed away."

"Well, tell her that doesn't give her the right to read it."

"More than that, it doesn't give you the right to have it," he retorted. "This isn't something you'd want anyways. Not after you decided to leave your past behind."

Damn, was he doing this on purpose? No, this guy wasn't smart enough to bargain with me. The piece of paper wrapped up in that envelope called out to every cell in my body. I didn't care who wrote it or to whom; that letter was connected to my present-self, not the 'me' from the past.
Believe it or not, I wasn't capable of beating this guy just yet. Maybe doing like three push-ups would even the odds, but my body wasn't strong enough just yet. My only choice was to go with his bargain.

"Fine. If you can answer a question, then I can- I'll try to remember some things, but not everything."

I couldn't stress enough that I didn't want to remember everything.

"No. No questions. You were right," responded David. "This is for your own good."
"No. Forget all that. Rather than watch the sunset myself, I wanna watch it with the people I know and love. Remembering might be scary, but if I get my friends back, then it's worth it. You're worth it, David."

David released the doorknob, an excited grin plastered on his stupid face. "Really?"
Holy shit, I was good at lying! The past me must've been a grade-A scam artist or something. Of course I wasn't actually going to force myself to remember these burdens, but I needed this answer, and lying felt like the easiest way to get them.

I mimicked his excitement. "Yes, really!"

He took a step towards the bed, asking again, "Really?!"

"Really Deally fo'... Sch- Schm...eally..."

There was a slight pause as he stared into the depths of my lying soul.

"You must think I'm fuckin' stupid," he said.

"What gave it away?"

"Even a dumbass like me can't be fooled by a no-memories-having-ass liar," said the guy who was slightly less stupid than I thought. "Hold this."

A strange orb fell into the palm of my left hand. It was perfection, both in shape and its absolute transparency. Inconceivably smooth to the touch, there was no friction against my palm when it moved. When I held it up to my eyes, my blurry vision cleared momentarily.

"Where were you keeping this the whole time?"
"Up my ass; don't worry about it," my friend said, "I'm cool with answering your question, but you're holding up your end of the deal."

He went around the room, closing each blind. The entire space was plunged into darkness, aside from the soft white glow spilling from the orb.

Nodding ly-ingly, I said, "You first."

Suddenly, a robotic female voice boomed inside my aching head.

[Mental damage detected. Initiating memory reconstruction // 0%]

Startled by its vibrations, I threw the orb across the room.

THUD

Its impact location splintered in a million different directions. The orb that was weightless in my hands had the effect of a fired cannonball on the hardwood floor.

David visibly cringed. When he saw my enraged expression, an explanation quickly fell out of his deceitful mouth.

"Everything you forgot is stored inside the orb. I programmed it to give you back your memories as soon as you touched it. But it won't restore them all at once, just what you can handle for now."

"You tricked me!"

"You were going to trick me!"

"Yeah, but it's fine when I do it."

He made a face that said, 'seriously', looking to the right like someone should have been there.
David sighed. "When you get some of your memories back, the orb will tell us if your mind is stable enough to read this letter. There are at least thirty seconds before the reconstruction process begins, so there's enough time to ask your question. If you wanna argue with me now, then fine, but once you're in, you can't get out without the orb's Parmesan. During the process, it'll feel like weeks passing by in your head; our next conversation might be a month away for you. Wouldn't you prefer to hear me out now than curse me out and go without a month without an answer?"

Someone definitely put him up to this and wrote that whole spiel for this dumbass to give as it came from the heart. It sounded like it, too. Down to the grammar that made me me want to ridicule him.

Me and David, they knew us both too well. It was twice now that I was pushed in the direction that person wanted me to go. Fuck.

Swallowing my anger, I told David, "It might be a stupid question but don't laugh at me."

David nodded. "I'd never laugh at you. Talk fast, it could be any second now."

"Fine." I took a deep breath, trusting him with a tiny piece of my pride. "Does everyone die at the end?"

"Of course, dumbass. We all have to die, someday."

[Scanning storage 1% ... 100%]
[Storage organization complete.]

"I know that! But what if-" God, this was stupid. "What if someone promised you wouldn't die, and they really, really mean it, what happens then?"

As recognition flashed in his gaze, David's open-windows slammed shut, his eyes showing complexity for the first time since I re-met him. "Most people aren't prepared to do what it takes... well, at least not me."

Shaking my head, I responded, "Even though I lost my memories, I feel it when I think about them: The person who made that promise wasn't like you; they were a hero. "

"And if a hero made that promise," he continued with a tone that made it clear I had interrupted him, "then it's the same thing; You'll die when there's a choice between their loved ones and the greater good."

[Calculating safest path of repair.]

"So it's either too mean and selfish to protect anyone or way too selfless and noble to protect just one person. It's pretty depressing if we're all like that. I hope we're not all like that."

"That's why people don't make promises like that in the first place. You can never be sure how far you'll go for just one single person, no matter how much you think you love them."

[Calculated]

"So if one person was like that in the entire universe, who would do anything it takes to save one person, what are they?"

After a moment of contemplation, his lips parted again, trembling with complex and unknown emotions.

The melancholy playing in his soul reflected saturated his next words. "A bad guy," he responded, "That person becomes the villain."
[Chapter 1 - Immortals]