Zachary Rawlins - The Anathema

Because they had agreed upon it, years ago, Alistair spoke with his voice instead of his mind. Alice claimed to trust his voice more, but Rebecca had mixed feelings.

“Hello, Alice. My name is Alistair, and I am a friend, an old friend and a student who is happy to see you. I am Rebecca’s friend as well, so you know you can trust me. Isn’t that right, Rebecca?”

Rebecca nodded and oozed trustworthiness. She had arrived two hours earlier and discreetly dyed Alice’s hair her usual matte black, and then washed her hair, amazed the entire time that Alice allowed the procedure without registering a protest. When she’d helped her shower, Alice’s body was as lovely and youthful as always, taut with perfect, unscarred skin, and Rebecca marveled over it, over the crisp black tattoos that crawled over her back and arms, as perfect as the day she’d gotten them. She couldn’t imagine Alice allowing anyone to touch her like this under normal circumstances, and while she felt an almost maternal satisfaction in caring for her, it was somehow troubling. Rebecca had clamp down on the emotion, to avoid infecting Alice with it. She hoped that Alistair wouldn’t notice the black dye that still stained parts of Alice’s scalp. Alice might have changed a lot since they first met, but she was still vain and sensitive about her age.

However old she actually was.

“Now, Alice, you probably won’t remember, but this has happened to you before. We made a plan to help you get better, in case it happened again,” Alistair continued softly, his voice as tender as Rebecca had ever heard it be. “You’ve lost part of your memory, but don’t worry — we made a copy, and we put it somewhere safe.”

Somewhere safe was inside Alistair’s head. Lacking his breathtaking telepathic abilities, Rebecca couldn’t explain how he had done it, she only knew that he had copied a chunk of Alice’s memories, and then somehow stored them in his own mind for future use.

“You won’t remember everything, but you will know the important things. You can use the diaries to help you recall anything that doesn’t come back to you.”

Rebecca kept pumping Alice full of contentment and optimism. She knew that Alice’s memories weren’t actually erased by her Black Protocol, but rather, she simply lost her access them. With sufficient time and explicit reminders, Alice could recall some of things she had forgotten. However, she seemed to remember less and less with each passing year.

“If I have your permission, Alice, I have something that I have been holding, something that’s rightfully yours. Something that belongs to you. May I return it?”

Rebecca’s eyes were screwed shut, concentrating on keeping Alice happy, secure, and calm. But she could feel, through the empathic link, the weight of memory descending on Alice’s fragile mind, years of thoughts and experience making her gasp like cold water hitting her skin, like flame tearing through dry summer grass. Rebecca absorbed the pain and terror that Alice felt, the horror of her past and its resurgence, and replaced it with peace and serenity, while Alistair labored beside her, tethering the memories to Alice’s psyche, forcing synapses to fire and activating dormant neural pathways. It was psychic surgery, with Alistair holding the scalpel and Rebecca acting as the anesthetic, and they worked at a fever pitch, trying to stop Alice’s mind from hemorrhaging its way back into blankness.

The process went on for a little bit more than an hour, and at the end of it, Alistair was white-faced and exhausted. Rebecca was half-blind by a migraine, with Alice resting peacefully in her lap, mercifully rendered unconscious by the final moments of the procedure. Rebecca didn’t bother to ask if they had been successful, because she was afraid that they hadn’t been, afraid that saying that aloud might actually make it come true. She didn’t say anything when Alistair rose to his feet and stumbled out of the room, punch-drunk and weaving. She waited there, the migraine slowly receding into a pulsing pain in the back of her neck. Alice’s eyes fluttered in a slow, sleepy movement, and then closed again. A moment later, they snapped open in wordless horror, and Rebecca had to calm her again, drawing from her almost depleted reserves.

“Oh, God,” Alice said, her voice thick and rough from lack of use. “Fucking hell. What — what happened? What happened to me? Why is my head all — ah, Rebecca? Why are you crying?”

“It seems possible that I made an ass of myself back there.”

“Do you think so?”

Alex looked away while the nurse swabbed his forearm with iodine, prepped a needle, and then, without so much as a warning, gave him a numbing injection. Alex yelped in protest, but the nurse ignored him, collected her tray, and informed them that the doctor would be there shortly, and then left, the door swinging slowly shut behind her.

“Well, the thing is…” Alex continued, kicking his heels against the examination table. “When we first met I may not have done everything I could to make a good first impression.”

“Oh?” Katya asked, her face pleasant and serene from where she sat in the uncomfortable molded plastic chair that haunts every doctor’s office. “That would be when you referred to me as a ‘bitch’, right?”

“Um, yes, technically,” Alex said, hanging his head. “But I wasn’t really talking about you as much as I was…”

“You were pointing at me when you said it,” Katya noted.

“Okay, that’s true,” Alex admitted. “I wasn’t actually upset at you, though. It’s just that, you know, I’ve had issues with Anastasia, issues with the girls at this school in general, and…”

“Which is it? Do you have a problem with my boss? Or is it a problem with girls in general?”

“Uh, well, it isn’t exactly like that…”

Katya leaned forward, but he wasn’t sure if she looked concerned or amused at his expense.

“Are you gay, Alex?”

“What?” Alex said, flustered, shaking his head emphatically. “No! I mean, not that I have problem with gay people, but no. Ah, crap. Is there any way I can just apologize and we can start over?”

“Sure,” Katya said, sitting back and shrugging. “Go for it.”

“Okay, then,” Alex said, nodding uncertainly. “I’m, uh, sorry for being rude. I was mostly yelling at Anastasia. She likes to interfere in my life, and I wasn’t at all prepared for her to spring the whole ‘bodyguard’ thing on me, and the last time she got involved in things…”

“She saved your life, right?” Katya asked, inspecting the muted burgundy paint on her nails. “That’s what I heard.”

“That’s, well, yes. You could look at it that way, I suppose,” Alex allowed, helplessly.

“I see why you’ve got a problem with her,” Katya said flatly.

“Are you messing with me?” Alex sighed. “I can’t even tell anymore.”

“No,” Katya said, and then laughed shortly. “Well, maybe a little bit. You didn’t do much to win me over when we met, and you do have a bit of a reputation for being a wimp.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about… hey, wait a minute. I have a reputation for what?”

“Well, you were clutching your arm and moaning a minute ago.”

“No, you have it all wrong! I have this chronic injury — I hurt my arm a few months ago, and for some reason, it never seems to get all the way better.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Katya asked, inclining her head to indicate the forearm he was still holding, despite the fact that it was chemically numbed.

“Actually, a werewolf bit me a while ago, and it hasn’t been right since.”

“Ah. Remind me to stay at arm’s length during full moons.”