Michael Seidlinger - Falter Kingdom

“You have to help him,” Blaire says, and shivers.

With hand held, there is a physical, corporeal link.

“Good night.” It is said not to end things but rather to begin again.

With hand held, Blaire looking into both eyes, she is given the truth to the legend. The kingdom has no name. It maps to wherever there is empty space to fill. The kingdom is far yet close, near enough to explore, yet impossible to master. The kingdom is everywhere when human eyes are closed, shut out from the realm that makes pain possible.

The legend of Falter Kingdom, which had been given the name by the various graduating classes that have frequented the site before moving on to forget, exists as a touchstone for the many who travel too far.

Be it human.

Be it “demon.”

It is just a place with some history.

Anything with enough foreboding and energy will be a place where the conditions of corporeal things fail to apply.

But at the same time, it depends on the viewer.

It depends on whether there’s enough trust. With enough trust, the veil of skepticism can be pulled and the full reveal is given, much like it is given to Blaire before leaving.

Blaire holds on to the hand, holds on to the body, long after I go searching. The search lasts a split second, and yet it might feel as much as fifty years to the human subject if the level of trust is low.

Body hidden, I must go. It won’t last long.

I will find you. And later a new body will find us.

Blaire understands, as much as one who has held a demon before is able to understand. I understood this upon my first sighting of her.

Blaire does not want to let go.

She speaks: “Don’t leave me.”

She was haunted, but during the haunting, the demon had lost interest. The demon had left, and in such a departure, a human is left forever lonely, missing a key part of herself, perhaps never to be recovered.

She remains amiss, so I let her stay. It isn’t so much as an offer as it is a plea. She has seen it — the kingdom, like the world of the living, is full of promise. Demons make mistakes too. Demons are needed as much as a human. To be wanted is to look for what was lost.

She found you. She found us.

As long as Blaire holds on, all will be okay.

Blaire does not die. It is my promise to you. She does not die.

She walks on, footsteps later to be heard by you.

See you soon.

EVERYONE’S TALKING IN THE PAST TENSE, LIKE I’Mbeyond being saved. But I look at the wounds, and I feel my heartbeat, and I know that I’ve already been saved once. This is probably not good enough for my bio. What I’ve written will not end up being the sort of remembrance I wanted for the yearbook, but then again, I’m fine with that. I understand that after you end up on the other side, you see this tunnel.

The kingdom is full of those looking for a way to make a connection. They dare each other to make a point, prove a point. They come to Falter Kingdom to be afraid.

But they don’t go here alone.

I’m not alone. Not anymore.

My body is nearing its end. It can’t take much more.

Eventually, I will look for a new host. It’s how many spirits continue. I’d say we go as long as we can, but some spirits walk the kingdom and are able to find what they need for as long as they can. And that distance, it can be pretty great.

But I don’t have anywhere else to go.

So I stay here in the tunnel. I sit on the bed and I use the things that I’ve stockpiled over time.

I often look up at the opening of the tunnel, expecting to see something.

But I don’t.

I watch a lot of videos. The ASMR videos are some of my favorites now. No need to watch the unboxing vids; I’ve long since been unpacked. Possession porn, that’s for the people who don’t understand.

This body, which can barely walk, it gets only about halfway up the tunnel. I walk up there every once in a while. I’d say I walk up there once a day, but time doesn’t seem to pass.

It does, but I don’t feel it.

Everything feels like one moment.

And really, that one moment feels like forever.

I’m supposed to wait here. I’m waiting for someone.

I have to say, I saw a lot in the kingdom. It was a lot of the same. Everything kind of falls into place the same way. People or not people, it’s energy; they are spirits, personalities, looking for homes, looking for friends, looking for families.

I would be scared, lonely, but it doesn’t happen that way, not when my best friend is with me.

Hunter.

I never think about what happened before being saved. That’s all in the past, and because this run is so long, the past might be a previous life.

But most days the body is my biggest problem. I know that it can’t stand this.

I wonder if Blaire will show.

I notice that I’m running out of food. But the food will last longer than this body.

The thoughts grind away at my skull.

My immune system has hit a breaking point.

I develop a cough. It doesn’t go away.

I feel every bit of pain, but because it’s physical, I can set it in front of me, like it’s some kind object. I can create that distance, the ability to understand it.

But it still hurts like crazy.

I begin developing my death.

How I die.

I know how I’ll die, but something keeps me from finishing the whole story. So I keep going. It goes much like this, what has been recorded in memory, in words, but at one point, it splinters off and that’s where I stop.

I get up from the bed and fall down.

I get up from the bed and fall back down.

This is a process, like anything else.

But when I can, when I get back up to my feet, I make use of it. Of the fact that I’m standing up.

I don’t think about my past even though I know that my parents, my classmates, my friends often think of me. They think of me as finished. They have their own ending to how I die.

Every once in a while, I walk up as far as I can, getting as close to the entrance of the tunnel, and I listen to the wind blowing through the trees. It gets to be so much like a routine that I start counting down the number of times I have left before the body finally fails.

Maybe that’s how it ends.

I’m not going to find another host.

But on the second to last time I walk the tunnel, I stand there in the dark, enjoying the sound of the leaves rustling. I hear the rustling until something else, more sounds — at first identical to the leaves — separate and turn into footsteps.

I count the number of heartbeats it takes before the footsteps stop at the entrance to the tunnel.

I see a familiar shape. Blaire.

No one goes here alone.

I wait, seeing if she will. Will she run the gauntlet?

If it’s like she promised, I’ll be there to run with her, like what happened when I did.

And when she leaps forward, in the first couple of steps, I feel my heart swell, beating rapidly. I shouldn’t have doubted it for a second.

Nobody should ever be alone.

WHEN MAKING CONTACT FOR THE FIRST TIME, SHE WILLchoose a scene from a sci-fi movie. She will run, shooting at an alien horde, until we meet in an interrogation room. First thing I will tell her is “I saw you running.”

Next thing I will tell her is “I ran after you.”

The scene will unfold and it will because there’s trust between each other. She could make that choice — wake up from the dream, get rid of me — but the exorcism will be pushed aside.

There will be two more things said:

“There’s an end to the tunnel.”

And then, when she wonders, “What is your name?” she will pick out the name that was clear from the very beginning.