Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

I haven’t freed them—I’ve sentenced them to an existence of guilt and tribulations I’ve caused but cannot fix from beyond the grave. And I am so far beyond the grave now that the thought of being buried in a dark, quiet hole in the ground feels like mercy.

He shows me that Emma is lost. She is drowning in the suffering around her, and it takes over her mind until she can’t think. Can’t form coherent sentences. This time when they lock her up, I am not there to set her free. She sits in the corner of an empty room and screams my name over and over. I am the only thought she can still express, and the pain in her voice rips through my very center, shattering me into bits too small for the king’s horses and his men to ever find, much less put back together. And for no reason he will explain to me, Tod is not there. He does not help her.

Where is Tod?

My captor shows me that Nash has escaped Emma’s fate. He’s escaped everything, except for a saccharine euphoria and the memories he lives in, convinced they are reality as his body wastes away because he’s forgotten about food and rest and life. He pays for his high with bits of himself, and remembered bits of me, and when those are all gone, he pays with bits of Sabine, even as he pushes her away.

Months flow like water beneath the bridge of their lives, and when she cannot wakehimshakehimsavehim, Nash finally lets it all go, and I cannot see the reaper who comes for his soul, but I know Nash does not resist. He lets the last of his life fade away while he rides on a vaguely pleasant fog, unaware that it is dissolving beneath him until he crashes to the ground, to the floor of his own bedroom, never to rise again. And for no reason I can understand, Tod is not there. He does not help his brother.

Where is Tod?

Sabine does not go to Nash’s funeral. She cannot look at him in his coffin, skin molded to the shape of his bones, cheeks hollow, eyes sunken in dark wells carved out of his skull. But I cannot look away.

I have done this, and I am not allowed to forget that. I have led my first love to his ruin, and with him, so many others fall.

Without Nash, Sabine has no reason for...anything. No reason to care, to be careful, to exercise control. She feeds to numb the pain, and in her wake the bodies pile up, but the police don’t catch her until she lets them. Until she decides she has no place in society and no right to freedom.

Then there is broken glass, stolen cash, and handcuffs she doesn’t fight. Sabine stares through the bars every day, alone in her private hell while the other prisoners shy away from her. She doesn’t feed from them. She doesn’t feed from anyone, and I realize she’s starving herself, just like Nash did. Soon she will be gone, and there will be no one at her funeral because she is fear itself, and everyone who had the capacity to love in spite of that fear is long gone.

My heart hurts when I realize that they are gone—all three of them. Prisoner, patient, corpse, I have driven them all to their destruction, to ends surely as painful as my own miserable existence.

But even worse than the tragic ends is the conspicuous absence. Where is Tod? Why can’t I see him?

When I realize I know what his absence means, I pray for oblivion, but cognizance plays a pivotal role in today’s torture. My mind is not allowed to wander....

And when my pain begins to bore him again, hell changes again. And it never ends.

There are infinite variations, and I think they will eventually numb me, because how can anyone hurt for as long as I’ve been hurting, yet numbness never comes. Each revolution of torture brings its own special brand of hell, and each is more agonizing than the one before, and this goes on forever.

Years have passed, surely. Centuries, maybe. I bruise, I bleed, I fall apart, I die, then I am born again, only to suffer and fall anew, but the pain never becomes routine. It is always fresh and new, welcoming me to an existence I cannot end.

I am hell’s phoenix, forever bursting into flames only to be resurrected again in the next heartbeat so we can dance this excruciating dance all over again.

I’ve forgotten my name. I cannot remember who I am or where I’m from. I think I was born into this. There has never been anything else. I am hell’s daughter, and my mind is as fractured as the Nether-realm itself, twisted and torn. There are pieces of me everywhere, and I cannot gather them fast enough. Parts are missing, surely. Memories. Thoughts. Names. Places. They litter the ground and I cannot hold them all together. I cannot hold myself together.

There is little left worth saving anyway.

Light is pain.

Dark is fear.

The scent of burning flesh is seared into my brain—what little remains of it—and I think that flesh is mine. Dinner is served, and I am the main course, and still I scream.

Scars. Screams. Blood. Fire. Ice. These are the pieces of me, crumbling between my fingers, and I can no longer remember how they should fit.

I cower in the corner, in drifts of filth, but I cannot hide. There is nothing left of me. What once intrigued him is gone. Dead. Scorched beyond recognition, and I don’t know who or where or why I am, but I know that my time is almost up. I have nothing left to give him but my screams, and my throat is so, so tired.

His shadow falls over me.

Over the whole room. In the next instant, I scream, and this time I am lost in the sound of my own madness.

“Kaylee.”

The voice came from inside my head, because my ears were too full of my own screams to hear anything else.

My eyes opened, and I saw only shadows. A warm, hard hand covered my mouth, and my screaming stopped. The sudden silence was profound. Stunning. Startling.

Disorienting.

Echoes of past screams haunted me, spinning me on edge, hurling me around inside my own head. Reality would not come into focus.

“Wake up, little fury. You’re going to miss all the fun.” The hand pulled me by my arm, and reality tilted around me as I sat up. The world assaulted me with light and color, sharp edges and cruel angles. Outside of my dirty corner, the room flickered with hundreds of points of light—human fat, crudely rendered, burning in bowls of curved bone.

The stench had made me sick at first—how long ago had that been?—but now I couldn’t remember any other scent.

“Kaylee.” He stared at me through red-veined, black orb eyes, only inches away.

My hands shook as I pushed myself across the floor, away from him, cowering from those eyes, fleeing from memories I couldn’t bring into focus.

He reached for me, and I flinched, then lashed out, swiping with hands that had no claws. Words that had no power. “Don’t touch me!”

My voice was raw. My words were slushy. I hadn’t played with consonants in...eternity?

“Whether you remember or not, we had a deal, little fury.” He hauled me off the floor by one arm and I hung there, bare, filthy toes brushing the dirty floor. “You can come willingly, or I will take you with as much force as I like. Either way, I will be paid.”

Was this face different? I blinked, struggling to focus through the pain in my shoulder as I dangled. Did I know this face, the way the flames flickered in his black, black eyes and were shown on his crimson lips? Did it matter? I knew his voice, but couldn’t remember how....

“Who are you?” I croaked. For that matter, who was I? Where was I? Why had the pain stopped?

He set me on the ground and laughed, exposing a tongue the color of my own dried blood, and the sound rolled through me, drawing anger from me like bubbles floating toward the water’s surface. “Today, I find myself in the unlikely role of liberator, but this knight gallant does not work for free. You will pay me for my troubles, or I will leave you here to rot for eternity.”