SRθ: Grim Inquiries (2023-2024)

YEAR SIX | Sit.41: The Next Time

I had the oddest dream. In the two months since we killed The Heathen, I'd heard not crow nor peep of him, in any of my dreams. Then, one night, I met him – but he was only a boy, sixteen of age. And I was, as well, as young as I was when I left my village. I could see he was struggling with his armor, which now looked much bigger than he did. I almost left the bastard to rot in it – but something got the better of me, seeing him grunt and squiggle. I took a firm grip on a grave, or shoulder-piece, or boot, and helped him squirm out of them. Underneath each chest, arm, and leg piece was a surprise: his tomato-red sweater above, a modest pair of khaki cotton pants below, and wooden sandals on his soft, unusually dainty feet. As I stepped back to behold him, it was clear that The Heathen was no more... before me now was the young Glutton, curly-haired and bright-eyed, looking almost like a paler version of myself. Well, except for his sharper features and thinner nose, and bird-like squint. Actually, he didn't look nearly as much like me as The Artist had said, but I suppose trauma has a way of highlighting the similarities between what scares you and everything else for miles. Despite his wider build and softer gut, he no longer resembled The Betrayor at all – it was as if the man's spirit had left his body entirely. It was shocking to see that without it, the two of us could have passed for family.
He thanked me, "Oh, God alive, I'm in your debt," and tried to kiss me.
I held him back, perturbed, and said, "That's not going to happen, not between us."
He looked confused. "Why not?"
I scrunched my brow and palmed my ear, my other hand resting under the first one's elbow. I grimaced at him, reeling from uncertainty, not sure how to tell him in case I was breaking some kind of news. "Dude..." I groaned out mournfully. It was that word again, the one I'd learned somewhere in another time.
As soon as he heard it, the tone was enough for him to understand. His face fell to sadness, and he looked down, unable to meet my gaze again. He was remembering what he'd done.
Suddenly, the armor pieces on the floor started to rattle and shake violently. It began to float, and all at once assembled itself, jumbling and morphing, changing itself into a single, solid entity: a raging, silver rhinoceros! Without warning, we were standing in the middle of a field, and it was glaring at us with angry eyes. It snorted hot, menacing steam from its shining nostrils.
"It wasn't me," The Glutton cried, "Y-you have to believe me, it was-"
I put a hand on his shoulder. "It's too late now. You've already shown everyone what you're capable of, even if you never wanted it done in the first place. As far as everyone else could tell, it was all you wanted from them... that kind of hurt isn't going to mend for a long time, nor will it heal easily."
He held my hand, shaking in place with fear. "You were right, I really am just a coward, but I wasn't trying to-"
"Stop." I grimaced, and took my hand away. "You'll have another life to prove yourself, some day. Make good use of it, and -I- won't see you ever again... at least not with my blade."
As I did, he disappeared, leaving behind a bed of hen's feathers, and a messy, feathery red sweater.
I cocked my head and held it up to brush it off. "Where the hell's he going that he doesn't need a shirt?!"
I was reminded of the rhino's presence when it snorted again, and dug its hard, flat toes into the grass to signal an impending charge. It was agitated, somehow, by the sweater, and its eyes seemed to follow it. I'd never seen something so scary so close before, not except... The Traitor, and as I remembered him the rhino morphed to take on his metallic image, standing up on two legs to assault me in running pass. He stomped right by me, and I barely made my way out of his path in time. Then he rounded about, and prepared for a second charge. I held up the sweater again, and let it flap in the wind. He stared straight for it, with his steely eyes. So I stepped aside from it, and as he tried to charge through me once again, I quickly dodged him, letting him pass me right by at full-speed.
"OLÉ!" shouted the crowd, invisible and numerous.
Then The Traitor transformed into a bull, horns as big as a house, and I found myself wearing a strange hat and ruffled coat, and-

I blinked to feel soft smacking on my face. I was awake, in The Author's old bed at home, staring right into his sister's face. My heart was beating like a hammer again.
She asked me, "Are you alright, mate?"
I panted. "I think The Heathen was possessed. I think The Traitor used him to steal a next life closer to mine, and broke him down until an alter-ego could form-"
"Aye," she squinted, "he was possessed alright, of wretched stink. And yer not so great yerself, love, when'd you last see the river?" She wafted the air in front of her face, playfully disgusted.
I smelled myself, and figured I could pay a visit later, but I wasn't as bad as she said. Then I stared at her, coming awake from my harrowing sleep. As I did, for just a brief moment, I could swear I saw The Blacksmith's face, and his stern look from behind The Artist's eyes. That made it awkward when she learned forward, to kiss me with tongue. I held her back just a bit.
"Oy, what the fuck?" she protested. "Don't you even miss me?"
"It's been a long time," I blurted, "I uh... need a minute."
I blinked, and looked her impatient self over again. Straight red hair, green eyes, soft round face, and freckles. Strong, hammered anger, and cuddly aftercare. It was kind of enthralling, actually... I'd secretly felt I'd missed out because he already had a wife. Unlike with The Ranger and Lumberjack, whose age and advantages made them statute stone which threatened to fall over me, The Architect and Smith might have actually been appropriate for me to share a night with... for they were barely taller, nor more set than I.
I got out of bed, and sat down in front of that old, creaky vanity desk... mirror stained with dust and cooking oils from meals of the last year or so. My mother had brown curls, brown eyes, and a thin face with a knowing look. Somehow, even with my scruffy face, I looked identical: in the ways I stood, talked, acted, and breathed. I'd never realized it before, but now that I had, it was uncanny. Then I remembered how much I'd wanted my mother to notice me among my numerous siblings, and how much I idolized her: I had given myself what I wanted from her, all along. The attention of someone fierce, upright, and devilishly care-free. The past was in the past, and she was gone... but I could carry forth what I loved about her, into the future. Despite our similarities, The Teacher had no bearing over me; I was finally free to express my love for someone who could accept ALL of it, instead of just the familial, platonic division – which I believed was the right way to keep it. Separate, so that eventually, the child can grow up to become fond for someone who actually challenges them. It freaked me out to consider all these things at once, but The Artist was not my mother, not nearly as close to her as I was now, nor was she responsible for her actions – or her inactions. So I swallowed the lump in my throat, and my hang-ups as well. I crawled back into bed. I looked my lover over, and put my hand on her face to thumb at her bangs.
"What are you doing?" she grinned.
"Just making sure you're real," I told her.
She smiled, and we kissed again. Before I knew it, we were rolling around in her brother's bed once again, like old times. Honestly, I doubt he would've cared.

A few hours later, I awoke again from sexed rest. The sun was well up by now, and seemed annoyed at us, through the single, foggy window in the other room, for trying to deny it. I saw my Artist sleeping next to me, and thankfully, she seemed again to me like her own, independent self. But it came unsettingly close, even while we were making love. I laid for awhile and thought to myself, still unwilling to fully diverge from the bed.
Sure, past lives and reincarnations make for a fun concept, but only when their previous lives are already gone and half-forgotten. Out of reach. I'd observed now, a pace that was much faster – a new self of each spiritual line could emerge once every twenty years in the same region, while multiples of all coordinates on their threads could exist elsewhere provided they were far enough to never meet. Or at least, rarely, and for as little time as possible – this was fate's measure of distance, to encourage us to care about those different from ourselves. Unlike us; we seemed to promote sameness in all forms of love. Even the Cat O' Sparks' sister was in one early draft his romantic counterpart, and the artistic practice of adding firm lashes to a man for his 'match made in heaven' was all-too common here on Earth. But that was another problem altogether. Twenty years, even in close range, was little room to miss someone before they were gone – a person could easily become acquainted with, grow to hate, or even fall in love with their own alter selves, past and future, or even parallel present. Much like a pair of twins whose intimate bond transcends familial love entirely, and makes you feel uneasy to disturb it. As if you're trespassing on sacred ground.
I tried to sort out my internal social network, and match up some cards in my mental deck. Even with playing cards, there were four of each value across each kind, and thirteen cards per suit. A complex matrix of commonality and individuality. Then again, people could be of another type entirely. Some, like The Captain and Doc, I'd guessed wrong for copies of my parents, seeing now that they were really just more siblings; immediately by blood. Others, like The Artist, I'd guessed late, leaving awkward questions long unanswered by the time it was figured out. Was it perhaps, some kind of temporal weaving? A measure to ensure that time stays strong, through layered perception? A threefold presence (on average) of elder, adult, and child, to share spiritually across lives some secrets of what's to come? Something like that would make it easier to change our fate, as when our past and future selves met, we'd be thrust into flux. And I imagined, it would make it more likely that we could harm our own alternate lives by our own misdeeds, and force the booming thunder of karma's lightning back onto ourselves over and over again for the same single act. Like an echo between the divide of land and sea, on the cliffs where I used to watch the sailors leave home. Sometimes they came back with fish, sometimes they didn't come back at all. And I suppose that both choices had within them some lasting effect, and only the ages could decide if they were right or wrong for it.
I rolled to my other side, stretching myself out and yawning. Reviewing notes, mentally, waiting until I had the strength to write them for future draft. It was widely believed among the Turtilleans (which is what I'm calling the Turtle Islanders) that an on-passed grandparent could become your next child. And when it happened, it was celebrated. This was exactly the same phenomenon, but a little more crowded. A touch of karmic compression, perhaps, upon a stronger temporal fabric, but not so stiff and tense that one couldn't bend it, or let it flow in the wind. An elasticity and looseness like silk, so no one thread becomes too hard, and brittly fixed. A relativity of spiritual proximity, that let us see at all times a third answer to every single moment, in an instant. Could time, and the impacts of our decisions, be disputed? Could perception be a matter of what's real to each one, rather than what's experienced across all three? Could a life be lived by someone, concretely, and then be seen differently regardless by their very next pair of eyes? How much could adapt, like a rubber band or ribbon, this silken, flowing scarf? What matters then, really? Are we anything more to the world than what other people and their tomes recall? What evidence of our grips on time can ever persist, if three or more of us are called to argue for each and every touch? Where did our secrets go when they fell into the pinholes between crossed threads? Would we be subject to the void's bend when history looked back, to finally record our names and everything we've done?
I sat up, and rubbed my eyes. I was confused with myself, finding my own thoughts overly complicated and stupid for their lack of focus on objective reality. Why, of all things I struggled with, did this seem to make more sense to me? What intuition let me grapple with something so impossible to perceive? Was this innate, and did we all share it? Or were some of us in light and others dark to the nature of our jeweled existence, and its infinite facets? Was that the reason why some of us acted like our actions had no consequences at all? If they all knew that their own blood and nerves were at risk next chop, would they be more willing to set down their blades? Or is it any different from fighting in a war, where you're all at risk anyway? I hoped, for humanity's sake, that it didn't have to be.