One Week in June | ONC2020

June 8th 10:27 AM

Last night I dreamt that my friends were still alive. We were all at the event of the season, the local Kepner Carnival. We went on every ride they had to offer while we stuffed our faces with as much cotton candy as humanly possible. The carnival was packed to the brim with tourists, carnies, and locals all trying to have a good time.

Then, a cold wind enveloped the carnival, sending shivers down my spine. I closed my eyes for just a moment as the cold wracked my body, but when I reopened my eyes, my friends were gone. I looked around to try and find them, but quickly realized that everyone in the carnival had stopped what they were doing to stare at me. I felt an icy hand on my shoulder and I spun around only to come face to face with Rusalka. Her wicked grin froze my insides with fear.

"You have five more to choose." She motioned to the crowd of people watching me, her amusement apparent in her voice. "Make the choice or they all die." I stared at her for a moment with disbelief, then I turned to look at the people around me. Mothers, Fathers, and children. I couldn't pull them apart from one another, it would be too cruel and too unfair for them especially when they don't even have a choice in the matter.

"No." I said to her and the lake spirit's grin widened even more, "I'm not choosing anyone else. I'm not playing your little game."

"Have it your way," She cackled and waved her hand, causing everyone around me to fade away into the darkness. "You just killed them all. But I still require five more of your choosing." She leaned in closer, so close that I could feel her breath on my neck. "It's not over until you choose." She snapped her fingers and I woke up in the guest room of my family's lake house, just having had the most restless night of sleep ever.

Mom has been trying to distract me from my friends in every imaginable way this morning. Luckily, she hasn't had to try and distract me from the injuries I sustained from yesterday's ice escapade, because all the cuts, sand burns, and frostbite I had covering my body are magically and mysteriously gone. I woke up with no physical proof that yesterday even happened.

Mom tasked me to read some more of the journal entries so I can understand what's going to happen for me over the next few days. One of the entries stuck out at me, it's written a week after the initial interaction with Rusalka. What my ancestor had to say really shook me to the core.

June 15th, 1816

I'm the only one that knows what happened this week.

Everyone else is just carrying on with their daily life as if there wasn't a massacre near the lake this week. The families that I tore apart don't even remember that their dead loved ones even existed in the first place. There are no records of them. All the photos they were in now have an empty space where they should have been. Anyone who I mention the deceased to doesn't have any memory of the people and the art and writing the people had created has now vanished along with their bodies. I feel like I'm going crazy.

James, my husband, doesn't ever recollect that we had gone over to our neighbor's house last week. He doesn't remember anything about the people that died or about the frozen waste land that we both escaped. I'm the only one that Rusalka must have granted memory to, so it's up to me to keep my family safe.

I don't know how long she'll have me hunt down other victims, but I'll do what I need to do if it means that our lives won't be as difficult and dangerous as they were in Europe.

Anna Marlow

Mom's confiscated my phone until the week is over so I can't look through the photos I have with my friends to see if they've disappeared from the digital memories of them, but that also means I have no way of trying to call their parents to let them know that their children are missing. Mom said it's better not to worry them, by now our long time family friends won't even remember their children ever existed.

"Are we the only ones in the family that have memories of the Rusalka?" I ask as I shovel a spoonful of clam chowder into my mouth while I flip through the pages of the journal. I don't know why I'm so relaxed and calm about this whole ordeal. The more I'm reading Anna's journal, the more all of this makes sense to me. She traded the lives of others so that her family would be safe and prosper over the years. It makes sense now why my Mom has advanced so quickly in her career. The same for all my aunts and their families, how they've all done so well so early on in life. I even have an amazing internship lined up with a world renowned Law Firm, that I'm hopelessly under-qualified for, at the end of this month. It's disappointing to know that I know it's some dark magic that's really gotten me to this point and not all the time and effort I've spent working on my career.

"This is only passed onto the women in our family." Mom says from the kitchen. "Your younger cousins will be the next in line to carry on the tradition in twenty years."

"But Eva and Luna are only five and seven!" I exclaim, my spoon tumbling to the ground, the chowder I was about to eat is now all over the hardwood flooring. I grab a napkin and start cleaning up my mess as I shake my head in disbelief. "Why can't Aunt Gina do it for her daughters? Those precious little angels shouldn't have to go through what I'm going through."

"It's part of the rules. Rusalka never told Anna that each of her family members had only one turn per person. Anna eventually found that out the hard way. She tried to bring sacrifices to the Rusalka twenty years later, but the lake demon refused them. Rusalka wanted new victims to be brought by Anna's daughter instead." I can hear the sadness in Mom's voice as she emerges from within the kitchen, "I can't replace your turn, just like Anna couldn't replace her daughter's. I wish it was that simple, my love." Mom brings me a new spoon and refills my bowl with another batch of homemade chowder. She rubs the top of my head before heading back to the kitchen.

"So that's just it then, we're not going to try to find a way around this?" I'm starting to get a little irritated by how easily my mother has given up on fighting for other people's lives. "You're an officer, for Pete's sake, don't you want to end this unnecessary murder?"

"Reia, it won't end." I can see tears start to well up in my mother's eyes.

"Why? Why won't it end? There has to be some loophole in her contract, or something that ties her to this world that we can destroy."

"I've looked everywhere for that answer, Reia."

"I can't watch anyone else die at the hands of that water demon." I cross my arms in a fit of stubbornness, I stare at my bowl of chowder my appetite fading away completely. "If I'd known that bringing my friends here was going to end up with them vanishing from existence, then I never would have come. I'm not going to kill anyone, I refuse." I look at my Mother who is slowly shaking her head in defeat, "Don't you even care that people I loved died?"

"Of course I do, Seriea. I know exactly what it's like to lose the most important person in your life to this creature." She sits down across the table from me as she cradles my hands in hers, "Your father died at the hands of Rusalka."