Hey, uh, this one took a turn I wasn't expecting and uh, content warning suicide? Like seriously, content warning suicide depiction. I don't know if that will survive to the final draft of the novel. I don't know if I handled it very well in this unedited first draft.
We'll see.
We're standing on the street corner, streetlights dim against the oppressive weight of the sky. There are ghosts in the air, ghosts flitting about, ghosts everywhere. We reach out and snag one.
The voice bubbles up from somewhere deep within us. "What are you doing?"
It flinched and struggled in our grip. But we were far stronger, far larger than this little thing.
We roared. "Explain!"
"You- you- you-" it stammered.
"Yes. Us." Something about the pressure of the situation brought clarity. There was a hole through us, pieces missing and lost in the gutters. We could feel them crawling around the city, snapped up in the beaks of the roving hawks. But we were strong now. We were looking for our cat. "What is going on?"
"One of the old ones started a riot."
We considered the flood of ghosts whipping down streets, bouncing off buildings, seeking any flesh to raid. "We can see that. Why?"
"The Keeper is, that is, uh" It hesitated. We squeezed. "The Keeper is dead. Broken. We're mopping up the pieces. Hunting."
"What about the witches?"
"What can they do?"
It was true. There were too many, too strong, too powerful. We knew we were missing something. A core of us had been ripped out, rendered useless. We were something too small. But we were still far bigger than any of these lost little spirits. Gently, we whispered, "do you have a name, little one?"
It stammered, "I-I-I did."
We laughed. "But you don't now. You've let me in. You know what I am?"
It blinked. We'd let it go, let it drift down the road, bumping off and vanishing under parked cars. It held in the shadows between bricks, dodging the moon and stars. We whispered in its ear, inescapable and all consuming. "Do you know what I am? I'm in your head. I'm in you. I am you."
"No! No!" It cried. "I have a name! I was someone."
"No," I chuckled, low and menacing. "No, you're me."
And then it was me and it was no more.
And the street was silent because the beauty of being so much is that we can do many things at once. We would pluck every single ghost from this city by force if we had to. That was our duty.
We were pretty sure.
Wizard cabals are funny things. They don't really work how one might expect. The name itself was kind of wishful thinking, a throwback to something that few had actually experienced. What usually happened was someone rich, usually a man, would find a book. The book would have a name like "Secrets of the Arcane" or "Rituals of Deepest Night". It would have a leather cover, an unassuming front, and loose handwritten sheets. It would be centuries old. It would promise to tell them how to do magic.
Magic books aren't hard to find if you have money and you know where to look. There are thousands out there, just waiting for someone with more money than sense to buy them. Most may be scams. But a few are real and that's all it takes for some to pass through. And so, the men gather in their basements and pour over the books and struggle to control the universe. They build their rooms and sit by their fires and drink brandy and chuckle about what they'll do when they're gods. They call themselves wizards because no one is around to stop them. It's a stolen title for stolen magic.
One can not acquire magic like this, because it is impossible to acquire magic. Magic is the flow of the universe and it is in everything. All you have to do to find it is learn to listen. All you have to do is look.
And these cabals always ended the same way. They would chase something, a demon, a monster, a ghost. They would chase it until the ends of the earth, the ends of their minds. They would stare into the abyss and the abyss would stare right back and laugh, because the universe is far bigger than can be tamed. To name something is to control and they named themselves, aping the secretive organizations of old. They never stop to ask where the wizards went, why there cabals are a modern creation. Why would they? It always ends the same. The monster always wins.
Davis Pendragon laughed. He was the monster now. And he was winning.
Violet found Ram standing in the centre of the city. The streets were barren of people, ordinary humans fleeing from the onslaught. Instead they poured with metaphorical blood, the graveyards of the city rising up to let their voices be heard. The maddening chorus cried and scream, blowing over them, flowing with violent rage. Ram stood their, confident, calm, the conductor of this chaos. They were the predator, the monster, the beast. This was their city and this was their prey. They stood there, in thousands of places, plucking ghosts from the air and eating them. It was a sight to behold. They were glorious.
Violet stood there. She stood, feet planted wide, hands at her sides. Her mouth was grim, tight. Ram turned to face her slowly, bringing all of themself back into one place.
"You came back," they said. There was caution in their motion, almost fear. They were afraid of her. Perhaps they were right to be.
Violet said nothing. She wasn't Violet any more, not really. She was something distant and far away. She was an orbiting planet on a collision course.
"Violet?" said Ram, confused. "You shouldn't be here. It's dangerous."
Violet's voice was cold and expressionless. It betrayed nothing but the closed nature of her heart. "Where do you put the souls?"
"What?"
Her head cocks slightly sidewise. "The souls. Once you eat them. Where do you put them?"
"They're part of me."
"Call one up for me."
Ram hesitated. "Violet, I don't understand."
"Call up a soul for me. Call up Atreya. I wish to speak with him."
"I can't," Ram replied.
Violet kicked her feet. "What a shame. Oh well. Tell me. Where did you put his orb?"
Agonizingly slowly, Ram reached into their arm and pulled on one of their tattoos. It came out, a perfectly milky white round ball. They held it in one hand and met Violet's eyes. Their fingers squeezed and it exploded, the souls trapped within bursting out to join the cacophony already present on the street.
"I wish you hadn't done that," said Violet.
"I don't understand," replied Ram.
Violet said nothing. She was a monster. And she was going to kill Ram.
The cat screamed as it hurtled through the undergrowth. There were things following it, things cackling. They wanted it. Their hands clutched at it, grasping at empty space, fingers snapping at standing fur. It howled a warning to the streets that no one heard because the streets were empty. Empty, but for the thousands of other cats descending now, a cavalcade of fur and blood and anger. The ghosts clutched what they could find, riding their beasts into battle. They would take whatever they could. They were going to eat The Keeper whole. They were going to start with this cat.
"I'm mad at you," said Violet.
Ram pulled themselves back to their feet, still frustratingly human. The rubble of the street cracked around them where they had been thrown into the, the force sufficient to burst the road open and set free the dirt beneath. They said nothing as Violet wound up for another blow, her body that of a great beast. She swiped and Ram crashed through a glass storefront, finding themselves in a convenience store.
"Please," said Ram. "I don't want to hurt you." They raised their hands placatingly. "We can work through this. Maybe there's another way."
"I'm mad at you," repeated Violet. Their back rippled open, tongues the size of trees ripping outwards with a sickening crunch. Each was tipping was a massive unblinking eye and each gazed balefully at Ram. If looks could kill, this one could to any normal human. But Ram was not human. They rode the waves of madness, dodging between the pulsating mass of ideas that were extruded into physical reality through the weakened barriers.
Ram touched Violet's forehead and pulled her down, down, shrinking her back to human. For a moment, the two stood there, in the shop ruins, Ram's hands on her waist, her hands around their neck. Ram licked their lips and exhaled. Violet's teeth sharpened, her eyes bubbling out from within themselves.
"I'm mad at you," said Violet, robotically.
"I don't know what this is. Did I do this?"
Violet kissed Ram forcefully, their tongues intertwining between teeth and blood, their hands clutching each other's backs as they pulled inwards.
Ram surrendered to it, relaxing into her grip, her hands. "I don't understand," they said.
"I'm mad at you," said Violet.
She kicked Ram and contact was broken and all hell broke loose.
Ram was a bird on the ground and Violet was a cat running along a wall. It was a hop and a skip and a jump, duck and under, claw takes wing. The cat reemerged, prey clutched proudly.
Ram was a rock on the beach and Violet was the ocean flowing with the tides. And the moon dragged them together and apart, their caress both infinite and bitterly romantic. Year after year, they collided and collided until Ram was no more, broken up and digested by the water.
Ram was a spirit and Violet was a necromancer. She dragged Ram from their body, from the dirt, from their rest. She held them up and laughed and pushed them into flesh, flesh that moved, flesh that bloodied. It hurt so bad. She was in control.
Ram floated through space. This was their domain. This was madness. This was life after death. This was how they hunted and for the first time it was flipped back on them. Narrative structure was a weapon and Violet was good.
But Ram knew themselves. They were the amalgam. They were a union, a collective. They were something greater than the sum of their parts. They were a storage. A storage for what? Something was missing, something important. It had vanished.
And the stars fell from the sky one by one, each the eye of a lizard staring from branches high as they hunted through the jungles of concrete. The world was carved from glass, metal, and bone. Great towers tore at the sky as the mutant giants wandered. And they stared at each other.
"I'm mad at you," said Violet.
"I'm starting to see that," said Ram.
Ram was a child wandering the streets and Violet was a predator stalking the walls of the city. Violet roared as she hunted and Ram held up a hand to stop her. Ram smiled and touched her flanks, trying to relax her, to reclaim her. She roared and flew off.
Ram was a goat and Violet was a wolf. She stalked through bush and shadow. But Ram was quick and canny and could climb seemingly sheer cliffs, leaping out of reach and bleating taunts back down at her.
Ram was a sun and Violet was a planet. Ram was expanding to eat Violet. Violet's people, her precious inhabitants put all their hope into a ship, a desperate final launch. They weren't fast enough.
Ram was a storyteller and Violet was a story. Ram made sure she was calm and content. She was long and twisted and dragged on. She had a slow start and deep characters. She had a happy ending. Ram told the story slowly and laboriously, as though it was from a dream. Perhaps it was. They told it as though it mattered, as though it was all there was and perhaps Violet didn't fight back.
But once upon a time there was a girl. And then there were flowers. And the girl had no name and perhaps that was the key phrase because in saying so, she cast off her name.
"There were flowers," said Ram.
"There were flowers," agreed the girl.
"How did you die?" asked Ram.
The girl stared back, small and wide eyed. The train rattled in the tunnel, headlights casting the scene into stark relief.
"It's okay," said Ram.
"This isn't how it works," said the girl. "This isn't how you hunt. This isn't what you are."
"Then tell me what I am."
The girl considered this. She stood alone on the platform. She stood alone in the rain. She stood alone for all her life. "There were flowers," said the girl finally.
"Yes," said Ram. "There were Violets."
"Like me," said the girl, smiling sadly. The train roared, due to enter the station at any second.
"Yeah," said Ram. "Like you." They were standing in a broken convenience store.
For one perfect and pure second, she was happy. She wrapped her arms around Ram and gave them one perfect kiss. For one moment, it was just the two of them and that driving passion, the forces that pushed them together.
But her name was Violet. And Violet was a sword. The glanced down at the same time, her hand straight through Ram's chest, hand squeezed into a tight fist in their centre. Ram's tattoos writhed on their skin, their face knitting itself into one of pain.
"Goodbye, Violet," said Ram.
"Goodbye, Ram," said Violet.
Because Ram was ideas and ideas were unkillable. Once more, they prepared to split. Once more, they prepared to flee.
"Hello Ram," said Dr. Rosario. Ram froze. Their body, their flesh was suddenly constrained and limited where it had been free and powerful but a moment ago. They couldn't even struggle as Violet's grip tightened.
"I reject that name," they hissed.
"Oh no, I think it's too late for that. Not while she's got her fist all up in your insides like that. Because that's what she calls you, isn't it? Imagine that. The Wizard's Bane slain by a wizard, brought low by falling for a low life gutterpunk."
"She's not," Ram gasped between pained grunts, "a low life gutterpunk."
"I'm mad at you," said Violet, unhelpfully.
Dr. Rosario stalked closer, his greasy fingers finding Ram's short hair and pulled, their face hissing with pain as their head followed. "Oh yes she is. And once I finish pulling all the secrets I can from your miserable little mind, I'm going to devour her." He tugged tighter, punctuated each word with a sharp snap. "Like. You. Should've."
"Violet," said Ram.
"I'm mad at you."
"I know." They reached upwards to cup her face gently. "But I think I see you. I think you're stronger than us now. I think we'd only hold you back."
"I'm mad at you."
The memory teased at the edge of their conscious. They could almost feel it as a physical thing lodged in their brain, brought upwards by the way Violet rooted through their soul. "Violet, I..."
Dr. Rosario laughed that nasally laugh. "Go on then! Last words of the great beast." He slapped their face once.
"You asked why I say I sometimes. I do when we're all in agreement. And we are." Ram swallowed and then laughed. Oh, how much humanity hurt. They could feel fingers straining at their heart, plucking the power from their soul. "Violet, do you know what the problem with wizards is?"
Dr. Rosario frowned, but said nothing.
"I'm mad at you," said Violet in a perfect monotone.
"They don't think they're special. That's it. That's what's wrong with them. Money and power isn't enough. They want to be special and they try to steal it. But do you wanna know the big secret?"
Ram smiled through the pain and pulled a little, Violet's head inching closer in their gentle hands. They stroked Violet's hair and caressed her cheeks. "Killing wizards is easy because everyone is special. Everyone deserves to live. And they fall for it every time. But you don't gotta." They gasped as her fist pressed forwards. Grunting, Ram continued, "There is nothing in me that couldn't also be in you. You can never be without being yourself. You just gotta," they paused to wince, "let it in."
Violet's lips parted slightly.
"That's it," said Dr. Rosario.
"Yeah," replied Ram. "That's it."
"Jesus, that was pathetic. Alright, my little Violet. Eat them."
Ram smiled as Violet ripped the heart from their chest. Ram smiled as the light faded from their eyes, as they faded from the world.
The beast, which was me, stood atop its tower. But the prey, which was also me, were far too numerous. In great numbers they swarmed the city fleeing from their home at the base of the tower. There was nothing I could do. They were going to make it. The message would be heard.
I stood stock still, barely daring to move, to breathe.
Dr. Rosario sighed, studying the remains of Ram. It wasn't a body, really. More a loose collection of ideas.
I couldn't move. I couldn't think. I didn't know what I was feeling. I was hot and cold and angry and sad and in love and scared and so many other things all battling for attention, battling for control. Is this what Ram felt all the time? Is this what it was like to have so many pieces?
"Well," said the doctor. "That was less illuminating than I hoped."
I said nothing. I wasn't going to say anything. I wasn't mad at them. Why had he made me say that? I wasn't mad at them! I remembered pouring my heart out, telling the doctor everything because I couldn't not and he just laughed as he prepared to ruin it for me. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wasn't mad. I promise I wasn't mad.
"Well, no matter. I still have you, my little Violet."
My eyes flicked upwards, cheeks burning with rage. "Don't call me that," I snapped without hesitation.
He sneered, face ugly, hands clutching for my throat. "What is it to you? What, you think you have any power left, little girl?" He roared, yelling. "No, you're mine! I own you!"
It was flowing into me now. I almost saw what Ram meant. I almost saw what I was. "Don't call me that," I said again. I could still feel his binding on my mind, my flesh. But it was slipping. I was asking the wrong questions.
"Violet." He hissed. "Violet, Violet, Violet! See?"
Without really thinking, my mouth opened. "There were flowers," I whispered.
His hand flew and I felt the sting across my face as though it happened to someone else. I suppose that it did. "You stupid little dead girl. Of course there were flowers!"
It all clicked.
Somewhere within me the beast roared. It was over. A train burst from the heart of the city, crashing upwards straight through the hunter. It died instantly, a fly on the windshield.
"I don't give you permission to call me that," I said. And without permission, the name had no hold on me.
My hand closes around his, bones cracking with the force of my grip. I can taste his fear, the heavy cloud of it pulsating from his sack of flesh.
His mouth opened to spill out my name and instead a blank space emerged, a loud silence. It had the texture of static and felt like sandpaper in his ears. I had stolen my name from his tongue. It was mine now. It a physical object, a snake curling around my arms and wrapping my neck. It was carved on my back in a shifting tattoo. It hung in the air and laughed into his ears.
He screamed as I broke his arm, twisting it back towards him, my touch boiling skin away. I didn't notice because I was far away. I was standing on a platform waiting for a train that would never come. I was being a flower. I was waiting for the moon to notice me. I laughed. I think I cried.
Let reality break once more then. Why have stability? Why bother?
My tears pooled through the streets, flooding them. Water bashed against the base of skyscrapers, centuries flying by in seconds, erosion drilling their cores out from the inside. And the people atop them cried and scream for help.
But I don't hear them because I'm at the bottom of the ocean holding onto a man. I don't know this man. No one knows this man. I'll take that much from him. That's what I'll do. Let it be my last act before I relax into despair. I'll show him how much it hurts and then I'll join my lover in whatever comes next.
Oh, I'm so fucking angry. I'm fire and lightning and storm. I'm oceans of acid boiling, the sun exploding, the sky falling down. I'm the weight of the world pressing against his back, dirt hitting the top of the coffin. His fists hit the wood, thump thump, but it's already muffled down to nothing. Nothing but the sweat down his neck, the tight wrap of my arms around him, the stale fear building with the carbon dioxide.
I'm whispering in his ear because I really need him to know. I need him to love them too. I need him to understand why. I need him to suffer.
I'm sitting at my fake desk in my fake office laughing at the stupid man before me. His suit is too clean, his face too shaven. I'm not gonna help him. One by one, I pull out each drawer and dump the contents on the ground. They catch fire there, the whole room in flames, flames that climb the walls as spiders. He's screaming for me to stop. He's begging me.
I pluck his name from his lips and wrap it tight around my arm, a band to remind me. The sole remnant that he existed. His body and soul come apart at the seams, my touch dissecting him.
"Please," is all he says. "Please."
I don't deign to reply because I too am coming apart at the seams. I don't have the will or the want anymore. I'm already dead. Why bother?
Why bother?
Clutching my broken little toy in my broken little hands, I let myself drift.
The child stood in the ruin of the store and laughed. "Wow," it said. "That sure worked out better than I thought it would."
The old man stayed quiet, merely watching.
"C'mon," said the child. It moved to leave the gristly scene.
"Why?" asked the old man, without moving.
"Jesus, why do you think? That chunk's dead. Dumb ol' Doc Rosie's dead. Whoever the fuck that girl was, she's going down any moment."
"You said once it was dead, we were done." He frowned. "That was the core. We're done."
The child's voice was whiny and annoyed. "Well, it's not fucking dead yet is it? There's still one chunk left. Now come on." The child scoffed. "Let's go kill a wizard."
The old man grunted. But he did follow.
It's just one step. It's just a single step, just one. You move the foot and the rest follows naturally. Just one single step. Come on. You can do it. Just a little bit further, just a little bit forwards. Come on. Dry your tears. You won't need them. Put him out of your mind, his words echoing through your head no longer. You're free, or you will be once you take that single step.
You can hear it coming. It's rumbling down the track. The lights are unbelievably loud.
Just one step. Cast yourself into the air and fall. Stability is overrated. You don't need it. You don't need anything. You don't have anywhere else to go but forwards.
Trembling, my foot tentatively extends forwards. I'm falling through the air.
I think someone is screaming.
The train hits my body with a sickening thump.
It all feels so small, so distant.
Shit.
I'm drifting through space helplessly.
Oddly, the thing that hurts most is that nobody moved into my room. Nobody filled the space.
Things come crashing together all at once. The weight of a life cast off is too heavy to pick up suddenly.
I'm standing on the harbour-front at the edge of the lake. Lights glint off the water from the stars above. Someone is screaming. Someone is always screaming. My head is quiet and calm. I miss Ram. I miss feeling important to someone. I miss feeling like I mattered. I was mad at them and I'm sorry that I was. I'm sorry that I was mad at myself. I'm still mad at myself. I don't really see what the point of me is. I'm going to fade away anyway.
Maybe water is better. At least no one else will see.
I take a single step. Once again, I fall.
"Bad night," said Sharptooth.
Seleshina settled deeper into the couch, pulling the blanket tighter. "Oh, I don't know. I'm with you."
Sharptooth growled, but didn't resist as their lover pressed further into their side.
The ghosts outside the window screamed. They couldn't get in. They did't really want to. Sharptooth bared their teeth and they fled.
"You wanna watch a movie?" Seleshina clicked the tv on, flicking through streaming services. "Comedy? Horror? Both?"
"Do you think they made it?"
Seleshina's face curled up in confusion. "Who?"
"That ghost and The Boundary Walker. Do you think they made it?"
Seleshina laughed. "What do you care?"
"Was just wondering."
"Mm." Seleshina flicked through options aimlessly while they thought. "Bad night. If they're out tonight, I don't much care for their odds."
"Time was," said Sharptooth,"that'd be us."
"Heh, yeah." Seleshina sighed happily. "Oh, the carnage would be gorgeous. Maybe we should. Wouldn't that be fun"
"I think they made it. They remind me of us."
"Dumbass. Since when do you care about the victims?"
"I don't."
They both waited, wrapped in each other's arms.
"Wanna go kick some teeth in?" asked Seleshina.
"Mean Girls," said Sharptooth. "I want to watch Mean Girls."
"Again?" laughed Seleshina, kissing them on the cheek. "Sure babe."
"Fuck off," said Sharptooth.
"You know I love you."
They sighed. "I love you too." There was the faintest smile on their lips.
The water is cold as ice, cold as the new moon breaking in the ripples. I only witness it for a moment before immersion takes me and I'm trapped beneath. The air in my lungs fixates, concentrates. It's a counting clock, a limiting timer. How many seconds until damage becomes permanent, becomes fatal? Can what I am now even drown? The building panic, the already active desperation says yes.
With struggle, I resist the flailing of my limbs. I resist the drive to move, to become, to be. I'm silent. I'm going to be a stone on the bottom of the lake for the rest of my short burst of consciousness.
The water is murky with the muck of the chemicals we pour into it. It's dark and filthy. But there's a hint of cleanliness there, of nature. It's like coming home. It's whispering down my back and in my ear. It's examining me with current fingers, running along my body and learning who I am. From water we all came and from water we all return to. The world is mostly ocean. It is only in becoming more than yourself that you can really appreciate that.
I wish my brain would stop already. I wish I didn't have to fight the urges. I wish I didn't have to fight at all.
I wish it could be peaceful.
I wish I knew who I was clearer. I wish I could recall more than moments, than snippets. Like something you saw playing silently on a television at the back of a bar while your boyfriend droned on about something dumb. My whole life is just flashes of moments and emotion. That's the tragic part, really. I can see my death so clearly, so vividly. But the circumstances leading up to it are a jigsaw puzzle still in the box, still in the store.
What drove me that far? Why did I relive it constantly, a never ending cycle, just me in that lonely subway station night after night? Why do my tears now mingle with the lake water, becoming lost in the murk? Why does it hurt? Why doesn't it hurt more?
I'm standing in a kitchen and no one is smiling.
I'm writing lyrics on the back of a test I don't know the answers to.
There are hands on my back.
I'm drawing her face as she reclines on my bed, resplendent in the summer sun.
I'm watching them kiss and thinking about anywhere but here.
His arms are strong and they wrap around me, squeeze me, cast me into the air.
I'm always falling. What's up with that?
I'm a moment in a storm, rain and tears swirling together, swirling into the river that carries me down the street into the lake.
I'm the cost of a life unlived. I'm a purpose unfulfilled. I'm potential untapped. I'm unloved. It's unrequited.
I'm burning the letters and laughing.
I'm a bird on a wing, a wolf on the hunt, a shark on a dive. I'm your goddess and your martyr.
There were flowers on the grave. They put flowers on the grave. Violets.
Violet.
"Violet."
I can't speak because my lungs are full of water.
"Well," said the lake witch. "What am I to do with you?"
She ran her hand down my back gently and affectionately. It was somehow calming. As she pulled it away, so too the pressure pulled from inside my body. I could almost think if it weren't for the weight of emotion.
"I don't know," I whispered.
"That's alright, sweetie. You don't have to know." She was beautiful. Unearthly, indescribable. She was a human, and a mermaid, and a fish, and all of the fish, and the lake itself. She hummed to herself as she danced around me, gently rubbing my shoulders.
I sobbed. I couldn't hold it in.
"It's okay," she said. "Just let it out. Let it out and tell me everything."
"There's too much."
"Nah. There's never too much. You'd think there would be too much water in the world, right? But it just collects. It pools and it builds up. And I gather up all the filth and let it flow clean past me."
I'm curled up tightly in a ball, held aloft by the water itself. "I don't know what I am."
"Shh," she shushed me. "Do you know what I think you should do?"
I shook my head, wordlessly.
"I think you need to rest."
"How?"
She laughed. "Come here." Her arms wrapped around me, cuddling me tightly. Somehow, it was warm. Somehow, it was safe. I nestled into her and began to relax.
A long moment passed. I don't know how long. It's hard to tell under the water. I could feel my form dissipating, mixing with the water. I was dissolving at the edges, skin flaking away into the currents. It wasn't really clear when or why. But it bubbled up inside me, everything that had happened. The whole damn story built up inside me until it suddenly was too much to bear and forced its way out of my lips, expanding to fill the whole lake and gnaw at the surface.
It was an ugly thing, the story. It growling and screamed and donned physical form with which to slash at me. The lake witch wouldn't have it. Where the story fought me, she fought back. Claws met her arms harmlessly, frantic motion dissipating through the stillness of calm water. She smiled as she clutched its hair to pull it back, her firm hands pinning it to the rocky floor.
And then, with the careful ease of years, she began to dissect it.
"Why," she asked, surgical mask on, "do you think you deserve to die?"
"Doesn't everyone by default?"
"Is good intrinsic?" She asked.
"Intrinsic to humanity?" I queried.
"No. Intrinsic to you."
"No."
She puffed herself up, a great balloon. "Why not?"
My voice came out small, petulant. "When has it been?"
"By your own admission, you don't recall much of your own life. You are guessing."
"What else can I go on?"
She laughed. "Logic. Emotion. The present."
Ram's face swirled into view, memories made physical in the shadows of the night. "I loved them and I killed them."
"It sounds to me like that wasn't you. Like you were in the grip of something beyond you, beyond anything."
"Doesn't matter. They still died."
She takes the form of a swimming cat, struggling against a storm. "Is that so?"
"The cat?"
She split into a school of fish dancing around me. "Your Ram was never just one thing. Neither are you, dear. Pieces of us die all the time. But the whole always recovers." She reformed into a single massive fish.
"I don't think I'll recover."
"Maybe."
"So you're wasting your time! Why bother helping me? Why bother with any of this?" I was screaming now, angry at the world. "Why not just shove yourself down my throat and be done with it?"
"I think," she says slowly. "That if you decide to die, it should be considered. It should be careful. It should be done safely in the company of friends."
"My friends are dead," I spat.
"Then I hope you accept me as your friend." She was a human floating in front of me, hand outstretched.
Bitterly, I turned away.
"Please?" she asked.
"I'm already dead. It's a waste of time."
"Tch." She made a noise. "You're doing an awful lot of walking around for someone who is dead." She demonstrated by walking around.
I ignored her. I swam a little deeper to wait for whatever came next.
"I think the problem," she said. "Is that you expect me to have answers." She was transparent, see-through.
"Is that not what you do? Are you not," my voice turned higher pitched and sarcastic, "the great lake witch?"
She chuckled. "Who told you about me?"
"Mallow."
For a moment, her face was that of Mallow. "Oh, Mallow! It's been a while since she came to see me. What a lovely girl."
"She's dead. I yelled at her and then she died." I was crying. Weeping. Bawling. It was too much. It clawed at my insides, trying to pour of me faster than my face could manage.
"Ah," said the lake witch. She held still for a while, thinking. "Do you know what the difference is between a witch and a wizard?"
It was a strange question, strange enough that I almost focused. Mallow had told me once, but I had forgotten.
"A wizard," she said, "abuses others. A witch helps others."
"That doesn't seem right."
"Why not?"
"I thought witches were supposed to be magical. Powerful. Wise."
She laughed again. She laughed a lot. It was almost joyful enough to spread to me. "No," she said. "That's it. Help. Do I seem powerful or wise?"
"Mallow's a witch." It wasn't a question.
"Mallow's one of the best witches in the city."
"I should've known." We sat in silence for a moment. "You seem powerful."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah," I said. "Yeah you do."
"I'm just a lake, little one. You could drink me right up any day you wanted. You could eat me whole and no one would ever notice. Your fangs are far longer than mine."
"Doesn't it scare you?"
She smiled at me. "No. I haven't a single reason to be afraid of you, Violet."
"I killed Ram."
The story burst from the bottom of the lake, screaming with rage. It was a shark, a whale, a tidal wave. It rushed me and she did nothing as it pushed me to the bottom, my back sinking into the mud. It licked my face gently. It was mad I was getting it wrong.
"Look," she said. "There you are. We are our stories, Violet. We are the sum of our good days and our bad days and everything between."
"And someday it ends."
"Yeah. Someday we end."
I twisted a little, tearing my body. "Why won't you let me die?"
She faded into the background, leaving me alone in dark water. "I'm not stopping you. I just thought you might want to talk to someone first."
"I want to."
"I know."
I was yelling at this point. "So?"
Her voice was somehow calm, still infuriatingly level "Say to me "I've decided to die"."
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
She said nothing. She wasn't there. I was alone in the water. Alone with my thoughts and my feelings and my memories. no, that wasn't quite right. The story still held physical form, blessed by the magic in the air. It swam around me, nuzzling against me. Key moments hit against each other. Mallow's smile. Smoke in my lungs. Ram's lips against mine. The heat of a summer day. The cool dark air of night. The beauty of the flowers.
There's a dark beast eating at me. It's gnawing at the depths of mine. It cries that I have no name, no purpose. It demands that I cease existence. On my worst days, I think it's all that I am.
"But we're everything," said the lake. "We're our demons and our ghosts and our smiling faces."
I pushed the story away from me gently. I didn't want to look at it. I didn't want to think about it. It was easier to understand without.
The lake witch pulled it into her lap and stroked it. "Tell me," she said. "Why did you want to die?"
"I don't know," I said.
"That's okay," she said. "I think that's normal."
"I can't do it," I replied. "I can't go on. I'm too scared."
"I know. Here." Her fingers wrapped tightly around mine. "I know it's scary and it's hard. Do you know what the worst part of being a witch is?"
I shook my head.
"I can see exactly how many terrible things there are in the world. And I can do nothing about them." She was crying now, her salty tears bubbling out into the water. "I sit here in my lake and I take people who are lost and I send them right back to get hurt again."
"Why do you do it?" I asked. "Wouldn't it be easier to stop?"
"Because," said said, "because there are sad moments. But there are happy moments! So many happy moments. I genuinely believe that the happy moments will make the sad ones worth it. Because I have to believe that. That our existence will create more happy ones than sad ones. Because why else do we bother? There's no god, Violet. No purpose. Just us whirling through space on a tiny little rock. Just us."
"Just us," I repeated.
"Just us. And I say that I've read your story. It's full of pain and sorrow. You've been bounced between things you don't, can't understand. So much out of your control, out of your outstretched fingers."
"Yeah."
"But I don't think it has to be. I think you have the power to change that." She caressed my face gently. "Tell me, Violet. What do you think of spiders?"
"Huh?"
"Funny little creatures. They're predators, you know. Violent. Sounds kind of like you, actually. You build great webs when you want to catch things. Like this lake. I built it to catch those who felt lost." She wove the water into a great net around me as she spoke, wrapping me up in waves. Gently, she pressed me back into my body, collapsing my state back towards human. Skin closed around blood and bones. "And you can catch something to eat it. You can catch something because it's falling. You can catch something for play. Or you can catch something because you love it."
She was Ram and Ram was falling.
"Violet," she said. "You died once. And it was fast and ugly and you didn't quite realize it, so you stuck around. You can move on if you want. It's really easy. You just gotta find what you're looking for."
"What am I looking for?" I whispered. I could almost feel it hanging onto my tongue. It tasted like Ram.
"I think you already found it."
"I don't know how to bring them back."
She laughed. "Watch this." She plunged her hand through my chest, through my heart, right into my soul. Tightly she clutched my core, her fingers almost straining with the effort. It was a perfect mirror of how I killed Ram. "Once upon a time," she stage whispered, "there were a bunch of pieces of a girl. They hung around the place where she shattered because they remembered being a girl and weren't sure how to be anything else." She began to pull. "But they didn't know how to be a girl anymore. They could kind of sense the shape, but something was missing." It felt like she was ripping me out of myself. "One day, they saw another ghost who was much more put together. This ghost was a spider who put out webs to catch smaller ghosts." I gasped at the sudden pain, the sudden intoxicating rush of freedom. "The pieces of the girl were so enamoured that they copied the spider. They put themselves back together. They built a web."
She pulled me inside out and held up a piece of my heart. It was a knife with a black spider sitting on the flat of the blade. The spider frowned. I recognized it because I had seen it before.
I was not a girl anymore. I was just pieces.
The lake held me together though. It pressed back in on me even as I fell apart. Even as I broke down. The water filled in my cracks and cooled the heat of my mind. I couldn't be angry or sad. I just was. I was the remains of a girl. I didn't even know my own name. I called myself Violet because they put Violets on the grave. Wasn't that fucked up? Wasn't that sad? I was just a lost little ghost.
"But," said the lake. "But one day, the girl figures out that she doesn't have to be a spider. One day she realizes that she can choose to be a girl instead."
"If I let go," I said, still holding on. "How do I know I won't fall to pieces?"
"Oh, don't worry," said the lake. "You will. But you'll put yourself back together. I know you will."
Her hands brought the spider to my cupped hands. It sat in my palm, the knife in my other hand and looked up at me. It carried promise. It carried power.
"Is this what I stole from Ram?"
"You tell me."
I considered. Had I stolen anything from Ram? "No," I said at last.
"Don't do it, little lost ghost," said the spider. "Cut out her heart and eat it. Think of the power."
The lake witch hovered before and around me. She was a human strapped to a table. Her chest was bared and heaving before me, so human, so vulnerable. All it would take is one quick cut. She was practically inviting me to. My grip tightened around the knife.
For one awful moment, I considered. For one awful moment, I could visualize myself claiming her power, rising up, overtaking the city. Drowning the humans and drinking their souls too. I could do it. I sensed that. I was powerful. Too powerful.
My grip tightened until the spider was no more, just motes of dust drifting away in the current.
The lake hugged me and I hugged it back, sobbing.
"Oh Violet," she whispered. "The world has been so cruel to you. And I fear it will be worse before it gets better."
"I know," I said. "I can feel my body beginning to fade away."
"I think that's normal," she said. "I don't normally work with ghosts."
My hand opened to drop the knife. To my surprise, she caught it and offered it to me again.
"I don't want it."
"I think you might find a use for it yet."
"I don't want it."
"You are all of you. You are your darkness. Your spider is still," she tapped my head, "in there. It will never not be."
"I don't want it!" I was desperate. I could feel it now that she'd drawn attention to it, an urge to eat, to kill.
"I am sorry. I wish I could."
I sighed. Her touch on my arm, her gentle smile, the way her scales flashed in the moonlight. All these things and a thousand more dulled the noise, dulled the voice.
"What happens now?"
"What would you like to happen?"
I could feel myself splintering again. There was nothing holding me together anymore. I'd lost my core, the thing I had modelled myself on.
"I want," I said. "I want," I said again.
"Anything at all!" She smiled widely, warmly.
My voice was so small, so distant. It wasn't even really me speaking anymore. "I want a friend."
I was dissolving in the lake. Fully this time. Little pieces of me spreading over the bay, folding into the wind and drifting over the city. It hurt. It hurt so bad.
But she never stopped speaking. "Violet," she said. "I'll always be your friend. Come back and visit anytime. Remember that it's okay to be sad, to struggle. It's going to take you a while to put yourself back together. But you can do it. I have every faith in you. You're so beautiful, you know? Whatever you want to do, you should just do it. Find what you're looking for."
I tried to thank her, but I couldn't find the words.
"And if anyone tries to stop you..." She trailed off. "Give em hell."
I wanted to promise that I would. I wanted my brain to start working. It was like being thirty different smaller me's, each too small to contain me.
"I love you," she said.
"I love you too," I said back.
And then it all faded to black.