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Perdition 1.10

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I did not raise my hand.

Professor Mecardi looked at me, then turned to Stash, Isaiah, and Max. The vote had been decided. I watched a pale grimace overtake his face as he looked behind him at the large wooden crate covering the pit.

“If we’re not killing him… Now what?” Isaiah asked quietly.

“We’re letting him out,” I said, then stood. Max glared up at me as I spoke. “I’m not going to let him go, but nothing should be-. Be…”

There was a sharp pain inside my stomach. It grew, like a blade of ice rending me from the inside. It was worse than anything I’d ever felt, sliding from my stomach out into my chest, thin tendrils of burning pain scraping up my spine, setting my brain stem on fire.

I fell forward onto my knees, and fell into blissful unconsciousness.

My next few memories passed flashing, spots of voices, phrases and visions. I knew instantly that I was dying.

After all, it had felt the same way last time.

There was no glass in my knuckles now, no blood on my forehead, no stench of death. It was a different pain, but the tearing was the same. I could feel myself going, palpably dying. It was comforting in a way, the only recognizable thing I’d felt since I slipped under the mountainous drug trip.

Somewhere far away, a woman I’d met just a few hours ago rushed to my side, holding me up, so I didn’t choke. Her red dress fluttered, pinned down by leather belts. She was pale faced, but pretty, with rosy little cheeks. Her name was Stash.

I blinked, the pain growing deeper, less subtle and spreading from my chest and gut down into my legs.

“It wasn’t enough,” someone said.

Another person: “He’s dying.”

I blinked again, and they changed positions. I realized that I was falling in and out of consciousness. I tried to speak, and someone put their hand on my head, shushing me quietly. Their hand was very cold.

Mother?

“No,” you said.

And I felt you for the first time, actually felt you within me. The ichor had been used up, but it had awakened you. Arisen from a deep slumber with the blood of the goddess.

You. I could feel you budding like a flower, somewhere near my left hip.

“Hello,” you said. There was a hint of a smile in your voice.

Who are you?

“We will see.”

I blinked again, and I had been moved next to the pit. It was open, and Max was pulling on the chain that bound Kyle Montgomery. Her hands were slick and black, and the chain spooled at her feet, flecked with the mess that stained her hands.

Isaiah and Alex stood by, swords free of their scabbard as they watched him rise slowly out of the pit. I nodded into semi-consciousness again, staring at Max’s large arms flex as she worked, one foot against the lip of the pit.

She had a cigarette in her mouth, and was puffing it hard as she worked.

I blinked again, and the next thing I saw made me scream.

It was a horrid scream, wordless and thick with pain and bile. It filled the large chamber, echoing out into the sands, spooking Bella to rear against her bindings, her voice joining mine.

My professor had his arms around my employer, robes fluttering as he restrained him with a great deal of effort. Mr. Montgomery writhed in pain, a thick sword impaled in his stomach. Max held the blade, and it was drinking from him.

A thick, black liquid was seeping up the sword, filling in the microscopic lines that ran up and down the blade with unnervingly fast capillary action.

The black blood arched over the thick hilt, some dripping off and hissing on the metal floor, more climbing up Max’s finger to seep under her fingernails, pouring into her skin like water into thirsty dirt.

Max pulled the sword out, and Montgomery went limp. The black liquid left on the sword quickly reversed direction, dripping off the tip and onto the floor, hissing like water on hot blacktop. It bubbled into thick, smoky clouds, then dissipated into the thin layer of mist rolling over the floor.

The screaming had spread the pain even further, and I turned back, staring up at the stalactite as I blinked into unconsciousness again. I felt myself being pulled toward the blissful lack of pain. It did not beckon, but it was still incessant.

“Not yet. Just a little bit longer.” You know it has to be just a few moments more.

Fine. I gritted my teeth, opening my eyes to see Stash standing above me, holding my head with her other hand on my chest. There was something in my mouth, a thick liquid that tasted like burnt roadkill.

“That filth doesn’t work,” she was saying, looking across my body at someone. “It’s wrong, we have to give him-”

“Pure,” Isaiah said. I heard him rushing across the room. “Where the hell do you keep it!?”

“Fresh out. We already gave it all to him.” Professor Mecardi spoke calmly, then walked into my field of view, hand on the hilt of his sword.

“So what do we do?” Stash asked him, voice wavering. “He is going to die.”

My professor didn’t blink, only shaking his head quickly. “No. The next decantation is in just a few minutes.”

“Don’t have minutes,” Max said, sounding strained.

“I know,” he said again, calmly. He looked up at the spire, slowly unsheathing his sword. Lantern light played in the space between his scruffy almost-beard.

“No!” Isaiah shouted across the room.

Stash shook her head at my Professor, then spoke carefully. “We all agreed to become part of this. He did not. We can’t just force it upon him.”

The professor continued staring at the spire, as if waiting for something. “It’s either that or die,” he said matter-of-factly.

“That is not a fucking choice!” Isaiah screamed, his voice drawing closer as he spoke.

“We needed one more,” Max said, stepping into my field of view next to the professor, looking down at me. “Five to match their five.”

“Fuck your magic number,” Isaiah said, and a metal crash sounded from behind me. I stared unblinkingly up at the spire, watching it carefully. Stash looked up too, and was quickly joined by Max.

“The First Kingdom requires it,” the Professor spoke quietly. “We will see, in just a few more moments.”

Bells rung, somewhere far away, echoing towards us over the miles of sands. Isaiah stepped up to my left. Everyone had fallen silent.

The bells rang for minutes. I blinked in and out of the pain twice before the air was free of their vibration. The deafening silence played tricks in my head, and I almost nodded again before I saw it.

The spire. Everyone was staring at it. It had begun to glow.

It was a beautiful, golden light that seemed to come from the inside of it, pouring down from the top at first, then suffusing every little running vein along its massive surface. The mist in the pool slowly began to dissipate, then disappeared, revealing the large golden chalice in the center.

Professor Mecardi knelt, one hand raising his thin saber to the tip of the stalactite. The lines that run the length of the blade, the same as those on the spire and the blades I’d seen in the dunes, began to glow with the golden light.

The others bowed as well, silently raising their blades to the tip of the spire. The honey gold light began to coalesce into a thick, clear liquid, pouring down the lengths of their blades. The liquid sped up the lines of their blades, just as I’d seen on Max’s.

I watched, enamored as it seeped into everyone’s skin. A smile grew on Stash’s face, she seemed to be holding in a joyous laugh as the honey-like liquid was swallowed by her skin.

It crept up her bare arm, slipping under her sleeve, and caressing her face and shoulder. She turned her neck into it, like the embrace of a lover.

Isaiah had much the same smile, not holding back even a little bit as he quietly giggled, in pure bliss. Where Max had grimaced as the black, sooty ichor entered her, she smiled around the half smoked cigarette in her mouth, the golden liquid sliding between the larger panels of leather armor.

Only Professor Mecardi knelt, stock-still, a faint smile the only evidence the liquid was sliding under his robes and into his skin.

Then, all at once, they stood, placing their swords’ tips at the lip of the white and gold chalice. The leftover liquid slowly sloughed off into the bowl. With the pain writhing in my stomach, I arched my back.

I caught a glimpse of the spire, still glowing, but now seeming to drip the golden liquid freely from its tip, directly into the golden pot.

I closed my eyes, finally just too tired of this. I felt the cold, nothing embrace of death, just as I heard the clamber of someone picking up the pot.

They’re going to make me drink it.

“Yes.”

I will die first. Whatever happens, it’ll happen to a dead body.

Somewhere far behind me, I felt the golden chalice chip my front teeth as it was shoved into my mouth. They were shouting. There was nothing they could do, I was already dead.

I took a small amount of comfort in this as I felt my heart fail, slipping into painless death. As I died, I thought of my Mother and my sister.

Would I see them, wherever I was going? I could feel myself already sliding into another place.

“That’s the idea.”

I froze at the sound of the voice, halfway between this world and the next one. Why could I still hear it? Shouldn’t I be free of all of this?

“Why aren’t you mad?”

“What do you mean?”

“You are a child, dead in your youth. You barely lived, and what living you did was fraught with strife. Why are you so eager to die? Where is your anger? Don’t you want to fight for a better life?”

Of course I did. I wanted a better life for a lot of people. Fighting for it, though… Hadn’t I already fought hard enough? Skirting out my own existence at the edge of a cold, nearly forgotten love. It had been hard, unpleasant. I had not been a happy person.

“It hurts,” I said, sounding like a child.

“Then hurt it back,” you said simply.

I creased my brow, then reached out. My sword was in my hand. At once, it was mine. I could tell, it was weighted perfectly for me, and me alone. It was…

“An extension of the self,” we said.

I was not gone, only dead. You were keeping me here, heavy in my hand. I was still here, but so was the pain, horrible and deadly, but distant. It needed to be purged.

It was there in front of me, red, pulsing and angry. The only thing left in my body that still hurt, that still felt at all. I was dead, there was no need to breathe, no need for the heart to beat, but the ichor… It was slow, rhythmic, and golden, aching inside me perfectly, like it was always meant to be.

It was so perfect on the inside of my skin that I could already tell I was an imperfect vessel. It was the epitome of perfection, and I was not the intended host.

“But you’re doing just fine, Parker.” You smiled.

The golden light pulsed with every syllable, not English, but something more pure. Speaking directly to me, from within me. Speaking with love.

I spun with my blade in hand, dancing with it in perfect step. It led me in the same dance my father had, spinning me as we flew about the onlookers at my sixteenth birthday.

I held to the hilt tightly, and it seemed to hold me as well, the fluttering lines of the blade seeming to hold me close, wrapping my body in its warm golden life and suffusing me with it.

“It’s exhausting being so perfect for everyone, isn’t it, baby dear?”

The self embrace was violently pleasant, fiercely and joyously becoming something else. In our dance, I slid the sword across the body in front of me, shearing away first layers of performance, then the unbridled humanity that no social contract can fully erode.

Next was the white lies, misremembered self-stories and faux-realities, everything taught to me that when learned allowed me to function in society. Past this, wrapping the core of my true self like a diseased and protective mother, lay the final layer.

It was the big lies that even the speaker of the lie believed. My dance died, and I stilled my blade.

This would hurt. More than that, it would kill me. Not just physically, I somehow knew that shedding this final layer would actually kill me. Parker, Natalie, me.

“Go on,” you goaded.

I was struck with the sudden, fearful realization that I could see you now. Not your face, but your embodiment. In this enlightened form, I locked eyes with you, seeing your hungry smile as I stood at the precipice of self.

I still felt true, perfect, and alive… But not like myself. It was an alien sensation, and somewhere in the back of my near-abandoned mind, a memory played, worn and torn away, discarded with the previous layers, but still faintly accessible.

It was a lecture I’d had to attend, a lecture on how opioids work, and why they’re so effective as pain inhibitors.

They simply turn off the pain receptors.

Whatever you are, are you just playing with my brain? Like a mouse inside a piano, plucking strings to pour pleasure into my head?

I turned back to the final layer, sick and clinging to my true form within. They would both have to die. “Will it grow back?” I asked, no tremble in my voice.

“Yes, but it will not be you,” you say, almost singing it.

“It’ll be us,” I finished, eyes simultaneously screwed shut and wide open.

I saw you smile, naked in your sincere thirst for this rebirth, vulnerable in your greed to be given life. I looked down at my sword in my hand. If it had shed these layers, these abstractions of personage and self… Why not the alien voice in my mind?

“I am yours. I am your sword.”

Reading my thoughts now?

“A blind woman knows her home,” you said plainly.

“How could I walk into a room without seeing it?” I agreed. I nodded without nodding, enacting some ancient and essential form of non verbal assent, turning back to the final layers of my soul.

I raised my sword to the final lie, and slid it slowly across the surface. It writhed in pain, and dissolved to reveal the shape of my body. He stared back at me, naked, eyes dead. His neck was purple and black with rings of bruises, and his cheeks were gaunt.

This Parker was dead. He had been for sometime.

February 15th, 2020.

I stabbed my sword into his stomach. The tight tug of friction on the blade's end never came. I waved my blade’s tip through the dissipating cloud that had been my truest self. It puffed away into nothing.

Revealing the final me in its place.

It was fetal. It was perfect. It was poisoned. It was me.

It was us.

We turned our focus to the red, poisoned region of our body. There was work to do.

It was aching, eating away at our already dead organs. It was not a thing of love, just a thing of uncaring, scientific decay that happened to be in the wrong place. It wasn’t malicious, just lost and confused.

“Get the fuck out of our body,” we growled. I grabbed our sword with two hands, and thrust into the poisoned flesh.

****

We awoke.

And my body felt different.

The first thing I felt was the stretching. It was a vile feeling, like something moving on the inside of my skin, all across my body.

That, and my two front teeth had been chipped.

I opened my eyes to see three faces looking down at me, blurry in my still-half-asleep vision. They were all wearing odd clothes, like they were at a renaissance fair. Beyond them was the glowing stalactite, slowly fading back to darkness. Home.

When the light from the spire died, the golden light in the room didn’t disappear. There was still a faint glow on the floor next to me. It was coming from me, I realized, moving in time with the unnerving stretching feeling. I brought my arms up to my eyes.

A brackish golden glow slithered down my arteries, rolling into and bulging the veins on my hands. I could feel it violently shifting my skin and organs to better fit itself within me. It didn’t hurt, in fact it felt somehow right.

Slowly, I sat up, looking up at the audience I’d gathered. All three had their swords in their hands, watching me carefully. The golden light shining from me faded, and with it, the stretching ceased. Whatever was inside me had made itself at home.

“Parker?” Isaiah asked quietly, sliding his sturdy blade back into its sheath as he offered me a hand.

“That’s me,” I said, then took his hand to help me stand. I expected a wave of nausea, or even a rush of blood, but instead there was nothing. I just felt fine.

I turned to look over the others. Max and Stash stared back, swords still out and at the ready. Professor Mercardi was nowhere to be seen.

“Wow,” Isaiah whispered, staring down at my waist.

My sword hung at my left hip, satisfyingly heavy in its metal scabbard. My left hand was perched on the pommel, idly fingering the dried leather grip. At once, I knew the scabbard and belt wasn’t actually necessary. The blade was fused to my body, literally part of myself.

I glanced across the room, registering that Max and Stash still hadn’t sheathed their blades. “Where’s the Professor?”

Stash lowered her gaze to my left hand on my blade, unblinking.

“In his study,” Max answered. She stood back, perfectly relaxed, holding the large slab of metal with a handle steady with just one hand.

I slowly took my hand off of my sword. Everyone instantly took a step back, easing off.

“What just happened?” Isaiah asked, now looking at my face in a brilliant shade of wonder.

“Same thing that happened to you,” Stash said, still staring at me.

I felt like I was in a zoo, behind a thick plate of glass. Are they afraid of me? I stepped out of the circle of people and over one of the benches. The room had rearranged itself again, and a thin coat of mist had resumed wafting its way across the metallic floor.

“Can I ask some questions now?” I said, looking across the room at them.

“Ask away,” Max said, turning with my movement to watch me carefully. Stash had replaced her sword on her hip, but Max hadn’t.

“For starters,” Stash began, hands on her hips, “you are dead.”

That wasn’t exactly shocking. I had known that, deep down, but… I felt for a pulse in my neck. My heart was still beating, but at an incredibly slow pace. The physicality of it was bizarre.

“Okay,” I said, a little shakily. “Don’t feel that way. I’m talking and walking.” I stepped past a table with the professor’s chemistry equipment on it. I stared into the many glass vials, and saw as many reflections of myself doing the same.

I stepped away, slowly making my way around the outer rim of the room. They all followed me with their eyes. I was looking for something.

“It takes getting used to” Isaiah shifted uncomfortably, then stepped onto a nearby bench and sat on the table it lay in front of. “Roll with the punches for now, but soon, it’ll catch you off guard. I don’t think I’ve even really processed it yet, either.”

“So you’re all dead?”

Stash and Isaiah nodded, followed shortly after by Max.

“Well,” Stash paused, “Not dead. Not alive either.”

“We don’t have a good name for it,” Isaiah sighed. “Think of it like this: Your body's a car running down the highway. On a full tank, you’re good for a day, maybe a couple of days if you don’t exert yourself. But eventually, you need to fill up again.”

“On what, food?” I’d found what I was looking for. The entrance to the pit in the ground, where Kyle Montgomery had been held. It was empty now, save for a stained line of chain leading down into the black, freezing water.

They had become silent. I turned to look at them, and the truth was written on their faces.

“Then you are just like him. You all subsist on the blood of others, don’t you?” Without thinking, my hand was on my sword.

Stash and Max matched my stance, upper lips jutting upward to reveal their upper teeth. If they had fangs, they would be clearly visible. Isaiah shifted, still sitting as he looked away from me and into the dimly lit dunes outside the tower.

“And you killed me,” I shouted, “Made me into one of you!”

“It was either that or die,” Max shouted back, her blade never wavering in the air. “You made that choice, not us.”

“You fucking poisoned me!” My voice wasn’t cracking, only growing stronger as I grew nearer to the three. “Did I have any choice in that? Did I miss the letter in the mail asking for me to volunteer for your stupid fucking heist?”

That had shut them up. Isaiah stood, hand sheepishly on the back of his neck as he stepped out of the inner circle, leaning on a metallic pillar.

“Look at me,” I said at him, voice low. “You look at the person you killed when they speak to you.”

He turned, face ashen. He stared down at me, then glanced at the other two. “Put your swords down,” he said quietly. “If he runs us through, we deserve it.”

Stash took her hand off of her hilt, while Max’s large blade still pointed unerringly at my chest.

“I’ll make this quick, cause we don’t have much time,” Isaiah said, a little louder now. “You wouldn’t be here right now, if you weren’t like us.”

I pulled my sword from its scabbard, filling the air with a pure tone. The sword shone in the flickering lamp light. “Don’t you dare fucking compare us,” I whispered.

“He’s right,” Stash said, holding her hands out toward my sword, glancing towards Isaiah. “You…” Her lips made a line as she thought. “You wouldn’t have made it if you hadn’t… killed, before.”

I blinked. “Great. So we’re all murderers?”

“I don’t know why,” she continued, slowly stepping closer, “but the process you just went through does not work unless you’ve taken a life in the past.”

I opened my mouth, then bit my lip. I’d taken two.

How many people had these three strangers killed? Silence reigned over the tower for a few tense moments. Then, Isaiah broke it softly.

“It’s why he picked you. He said you were perfect.”

Mecardi. I’d been in town for over a year, in his classes for most of that time. How long had he been watching me from the front of the classroom, waiting for the chance to watch me die?

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, slowly lowering my sword and then sliding it into my scabbard.

“Okay. Basics?” I asked. “Like I said earlier, this is my life now, right?”

Isaiah perked up at my change in mood. “Welcome to the rest of your unlife,” he said, gravely smiling.

“Do not fucking call it that,” Max said quietly.

And like that, the atmosphere of hostility had vanished. I sat, unthinkingly moving my scabbard to allow for the movement.

“Basics,” Stash nodded, looking up at the ceiling with a finger to her chin. Max moved to sit next to her, finally putting her massive blade back into its home.

“Ah,” Isaiah snapped, “We don’t need to breathe anymore.”

The other two looked across the room at him, Stash curious, Max disapproving.

“What? It’s true. I could stay underwater in my bath for like five minutes. Could save your life someday!”

Stash clicked her tongue and nodded. “Day. Sunlight kills.”

“Wait, really?” Max and her nodded. “Fuck.” I loved the summer months. “Okay, wait,” I said. “Sunlight kills and you drink blood? And you couldn’t come up with a name for what you are?”

“We don’t wanna say-. Say that,” Isaiah said, a little sheepishly. “Vamps are evil. We are not evil. Plus we get super powers.”

“Don’t call them…” Max sighed, shaking her head. “The ichor and the voice,” she tapped her head, “grant us abilities that we need to survive. Everyone gets something different.”

“What do you have?” I asked Max.

“He’s got invisibility,” Isaiah stage whispered.

“It’s not--. Look, kid.” Max looked me in the eyes, her brow set seriously. “What’s important is that you know the basics. What you need to keep you safe. Got it?”

I shook my head. “I guess so… I’m having trouble wrapping my head around all of this. Does garlic hurt? What about reflections?”

“No and no,” Max said. “And we can cross running water, but we can’t drink it. Well, we can, but it tastes like shit.” She pulled a single cigarette that appeared to be hand rolled from a clasped pocket on the back of her leather armor.

“Why? Why does whatever we have inside of us want blood instead of food and water?”

Max shrugged, then stood to light her cigarette in a nearby lantern. She inhaled smoke deeply, then walked to the back of the room. “Ask the professor. You saw what’s inside of you, just like we did when we died. It isn’t meant for us.”

She turned away from us to untie Bella, and started to step out into the sand, then stopped, and looked back at me.

“Stay safe, kid.” She took her step past the tower and into the sand, then disappeared. Bella quickly followed suit, a whinny cut short as she vanished.

“He thinks he’s so cool,” Isaiah said disgustedly.

“That,” I said, gesturing to where Max had just been. “What the hell was that? Frankly, what the hell is all of this place?” As if waiting for my question, the room’s furniture puffed into dust. It was now less formal, but still quite well organized, like a clean communal studying spot.

Isaiah held up a finger as Stash began to speak. He turned around, then pointed into the dimly lit desert. “Look,” he said.

I peered out at the dunes, then blinked as I saw something flicker in their place. A hallway. It had vanished as quickly as I’d seen it, but if I focused…

It revealed itself.

The hallway was in the same style of the tower, metal floors and walls with the spidery nerve decal spilling down their lengths. It was lit by lanterns hanging on the wall, and had several closed wooden doors set into the walls.

“Who the hell built this place?” I wondered aloud, blinking between the two different realities.

“Truth,” Stash said, then blushing a little, she clarified. “The ichor you saw decant from the Mothervein… We think it’s been here for a very long time. Longer than humans, even. It is the source of the ichor that makes us into our truest form. Without us, it leaked into the surrounding landscape for billions of years, so even the land is… true.”

“Like the whole Platonic ideals thing,” Isaiah said.

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Oh, the pizza delivery boy can’t be well read?!” He said, throwing his hands in the air, his serape throwing gusts of mist across the floor.

“That’s what we are, essentially,” Stash said. “Perfect, more idealized humans.”

I looked at her skeptically. “And the swords?”

“The perfect, idealized weapon.” She touched a hand to the pommel of her long blade. “The sword,” then she turned her eyes to the spire, “from the stone.”

“It feels more like metal,” Isaiah said simply. “But the sword is where the power comes from. You’re a host, it’s a…” He looked at Stash. “What’s a nice word for a parasite?”

“The professor says some of the notes call it a regent, or viceroy. Maybe passenger?" she tried. "It's definitely symbiotic, not parasitic..."

“Notes?” I asked, turning back to where the professor’s chemistry kit had been. They were gone, having moved when Max left with Bella.

“The professor has found some notes kept by the… Let’s call them the previous tenants.” She smiled, but only with the corner of her mouth.

I looked around the room, staring down each of the half visible hallways in turn as I made a circle. “How many people have been in this room?”

“Many sets of five,” Stash said reverently, looking up at the spire “Now that we are five, the power will recognize us.”

I blinked at her. “God, this day just keeps getting weirder. I’m exhausted.”

“Well, it’s not every day you stab the metaphysical embodiment of thallium poisoning,” Isaiah said. “But you’re right. The sun is coming quickly. We should get to our rooms as fast as we can.”

“We only sleep during the day?” I asked.

Stash stepped toward the tower. “Less like sleep… More like hibernation. Tonight will be different, though, right?” She looked at Isaiah, then put one hand flat against the spire, whispering something under her breath with her eyes closed.

“Prof says with five of us, we’ll actually have a dream this time. Something about the First Kingdom.” He looked down at his bony wrist, and then smacked his head as he realized he had no watch. “We gotta go quick.”

“Where are we going? Here isn’t safe?” I looked around at the empty dunes, lit eerily by the half-light above. I imagined an army of skeletons lifting themselves out of the sand, pulling out the half decayed swords and charging us.

“The sunrise is beautiful. Want to stay and see it?” Stash asked, her arm on Isaiah’s back, steering him toward one of the half glimpsed hallways. He reluctantly followed, beckoning me to do the same. I hurried through the furniture to join them.

Just as I reached them, they both stepped over the boundary, and disappeared. The furniture puffed into misty nonexistence, taking a few moments to choose their next shape.

I watched, curiosity shifting to worry as they coalesced into a concentric ring of mirrors, all facing me. I was deep within the bowels of a mountain, surrounded by mist and mirrors, all shrouded in a complete and utter silence.

The wan shuffle of my boots was a cacophony, and I watched myself step backward, reflected five times. The mirrors seemed to whisper, “You are alone.”

“Never,” you said. Your voice is filled with warmth, and love.

You have found a home within me, and no matter the coming struggle, you’ll always be at my side. Calling the shots when I’m lost in indecision.

I stepped forward, staring into the mirror.

For a horrified, lovely moment, I did not recognize who stared back.

Thick green cloak, leather boots, brown hair, brown eyes, too short… It was me., but not Parker. Not just Parker, not any more.

“Who are you?”

What is your name?

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