A Spring Storm

REFRENCE:
Vèolité is pronounced VIO-lee-tay or Vee-o-lee-tay or Vee-o-le-et
Alfisch is pronounced Alck-fish
Merytl is pronounced Mere-y-tell
This story is set in the past and not the future. The ‘-’ symbol indicates B.C., but in this story the people of Earth have yet to make up or believe in the Before Christ and Anno Domini ways, instead they believe in a different scale of time called Dron Ellie, in other words, they only use the symbols – and + to indicate the time period. This story takes place in -2946. The Dron Ellie switches to + at 5090, which turns into +1000. Say, for example, 4 April, -2946. It would be written -4’4.2946.
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“Vèolité, what causes you to walk amongst the dead?” Asked Alfisch. The girl sat on the headstone. Her red dress with black poke-a-dots blew lightly in the cold, wet wind like a fresh grown flower. She had her chin in her hands and she was staring at the ground. Her black hair stuck to her head as the water poured down on them. She cared not for the water, in fact she liked the feel of it. Alfisch was sitting on the side of the headstone eating an apple. He wore brown slacks, a loose fitting dress shirt. His bronze hair was brown in the grey light of the day, and his bare feet were long and veined.
He took another bite out of the apple. “Did you hear me, Vèolité?” He asked.
“Yes,” She replied. “I don’t know what brings me to the dead, aside from the fact that I am the only one who can see them. I can see the Vampires and the Ghouls. I can see the Eves and Hollows. I can see ghosts, too.” She said. Leaves stirred between the isles of headstones. Alfisch nodded and took another large bite from the apple. He would be done with it before this meeting was over.
“Do you like to see the dead?” Alfisch asked. Her mouth drew into a line.
“Some dead are better than others. The Eves and Hollows are the worst—”
“Because they are from Mellineum, the place of sorrow and lost.” Alfisch said and finished the apple with another bite. He threw the core into the grass where it rolled for a moment, and then stopped. Immediately the ants began to smell the fresh food, they clamored towards the apple with a new mission.
“And where are the Ghouls from?” She asked looking slightly at Alfisch. Alfisch smirked, his canine poking his lower lip.
“The same place Vampyre do. From the dissipation of human souls.” He said. Vèolité’s eyebrows arched.
“How do you mean?” She asked. Alfisch pushed his long fingers through his hair and two fingers on his chin.
“Well, you see when a man dies, or a woman is killed—”
“Why must they be killed?” Vèolité interrupted.
“If you let me finish, then maybe I would get to that.” Alfisch said. Vèolité didn’t say anything else.
“As I was saying, when a woman is killed, then the soul will go to one of the five Epriums—Isés, Kagawase, Phatex, Regadex, or Mellineum. They are in descending order, by the way. If the soul is not accepted into Isés or Phatex—Kagawase is for animal spirits—and goes into Regadex—Mellineum is another level of the Underworld—then a Ghoul is usually formed because the soul is annihilated, but the body is not.”
Vèolité gave Alfisch a blank stare. “That makes no sense at all.” She said. He waved his hand at her.
“You’re Mortale brain just doesn’t understand the complex systems of the Universe.” He said. Vèolité shot to her feet.
“I’ll have you know that I was honors in my class, and I am currently studying Universal Metrixcies!” She snapped.
“Useless class, especially for someone of your talent.” Alfisch said as he closed his eyes and rested his head on his tombstone.
“Seeing the dead isn’t a talent.” Vèolité snapped quickly. Alfisch shrugged.
“Whatever. I just think that you could be a real asset to the 7 Chambers Society of the East.” Vèolité gasped.
“The Forbiddens?” She said, and swallowed what felt like the earth.
“Is that what the Mortale call them?” Alfisch asked, still not opening his eyes.
“Yes, the 7 Chambers Society was outlawed by the Priests’ in -2734.” She said.
“Hm, news to me.” He said with another shrug. Vèolité sighed and sat back on the tombstone.
“So,” Alfisch said after a few minutes of silence, only the rain to accompany them. “how come you hang out with us spirits? Something you looking for?” He asked and peeked one eye at her.
“I don’t hang out with the dead, I just…”
“Hang out?” Alfisch said. She smacked him in the back of the head.
“No, it’s just because…I want to see my mother again…And also because, the dead. They are much more exciting than that of the living.” Alfisch was quiet for a second and then he spoke again.
“Then what makes the living so boring, Vèolité?” He asked. She looked at him. She didn’t know how to reply to that. She didn’t know what made the living so boring, they just were. They stuck to their religions and churches, many of them feared to step out of their doors. They never stopped learning, studying, and figuring out things. They were no fun with their mathematics and theories of the relative universe. Not to say she wasn’t interested in the world herself, but the people in her world acted as if they had no soul. As if they were all Ghouls. Trapped forever to never explore what was beyond the Third Rim.
Alfisch smirked. “You cannot answer me without speaking of the Great Studies of the Systems of the World, can you? You cannot answer me without speaking of the ignorance of your race. Do you say it because you are the only one of your race who can see the dead, who can truly understand what it means to be amongst the dead? Is it because not all of them question what else is there to life like you?”
“What are you saying?” Vèolité asked. He shrugged.
“I don’t know, what do you think I’m saying. I’m just trying to figure out why you believe your kind to be so boring.” Vèolité narrowed her eyes at him. There was something about him that was too questionable. Too….
“You are not a ghost are you?” Vèolité asked suddenly without getting up. The water slowly slid down her hair and dropped onto the ground to join its siblings. She slowly turned to him as he smiled and watched as the ants ate the apple which he had eaten.
“No. But I not man nor Vampire either.” He said. He slowly stood and put his hands behind his head.
“Where are you going?” Vèolité asked and stood herself. He didn’t turn as he spoke.
“To take a walk. A walk to the east.” He said, still standing.
“You sound familiar.” She said suddenly. She had finally voiced her thoughts from earlier in the conversation. “Why do you sound familiar?” She asked. He stood. Suddenly the rain got harder. She stared, not caring that her dress was now stuck to her legs and stomach. What she cared about was what she saw on Alfisch’s back: long, thin marks. Dark, and scabbed over.
His eyes, burn with fear and in the dark she can see them glowing like two bulbs in on the street during a hurricane. He is chained to the wall. The dark man lashes the whip out at him again. Again. Again. There is a burning, raging pain in his eyes and he hollered out when the whip slashes him on the back of the head, where his hair used to be before they shaved them. Shaved them both. She could only stare as she stood in the shadows, invisible, and unmoving. What he did not see was that she was crying. Glistening, salty tears.
“AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!!” His voice echo’s through the halls, lighting strikes and lights the hall.
She suddenly gasped.
“Enoch.” She said only a half whispers. He turned to her. He shook his head.
“Alfisch. In Isélean, it means fear. But I am no longer a boy of fear. I am a man of strength. Even when others were not there to help,” He closed his eyes. “I still stood my own. I didn’t let the fear consume me. Instead, I consumed it.” He said. Vèolité stared at him for a long moment.
“Oh brother, I-I don’t know what I say! I am sorry! I am so sorry!” Vèolité said and thunder rumbled above them. Alfisch turned away from her and clenched his fists. He shook violently.
“Sorry?! That is all that you can say after all those nights! Weeks, months, years of being whipped and whipped for your crimes, for your mess ups!” He said and whipped around at her. He was shaking from both the cold and his rage all at once. Vèolité staggered back and tripped on her own two feet. She splashed down into a puddle and more thunder rumbled. She trembled in fear. He stared at her, jarring fury bounced in his eyes.
“Please!” She hollered. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt, I could do nothing or they would kill me! Murder me!” She screamed. He bellowed in rage and kicked the metal fence—there was a dent. He gripped the fence, his knuckles white as snow. She didn’t realize it, but she was crying. It was hard to tell within the rain. He stopped trembling and blew out a long breath.
“I have to go. I will have to tell the Society that I could not recruit you.” He said and quickly began to hurry away. Vèolité got off of her but and ran to him. She grabbed him from behind and turned him around. She hugged him. He was so warm. So warm!
She slept with him, he didn’t even sleep in fact. He kept looking around the room, making sure there were no unseen dangers. There was a single Eve in the corner, but it only stood there. Afraid of the Amulet and the Marking which he bore on him. He hugged her when she woke as lighting struck. In the light, the Eve was invisible. When it was dark, she was still there, scowling and waiting for the chance to pounce.
“I want to come! I want to come! Please take me with you, I am sorry for all those nights, weeks, days, and months. I am sorry, just please.” She pulled away from him, but clung to his arms, staring up at him. “I just want to be with you again. I’ve missed you so much! Both father and I have missed you!” She said. Alfisch’s eyes widened at the sound of ‘father’. She stared into his eyes. “So will you allow me to come?”
He was silent for a moment, his mouth a line. “I want to see father first.” He said. Vèolité smiled, almost burst out laughing, and nodded. She nodded and they began to go off back towards the apartment.
The narrow building had platforms running up the face of it, along with tall, thick walls of ivy. The gate that led into the ally was rusted and covered in Allen Flowers and Mossburn brush.
The steps are cracked, and the door has been beaten, still the golden plated numbers have yet to fall off: 8890B. Vèolité produces a ring of bronze keys from the little slot on the left slide of the door after pressing in a combination on the ancient keypad.
Inside, the main lobby is an unheated, concrete area. At the end of the room there is elevator. To the immediate left there are stairs. There is a light bulb that juts out the wall that has long since blown out. There is also a door that leads to the Underground, but behind the door there are only bricks that have been built there as to prevent anymore robberies from the Underground.
“Come,” Vèolité said. The little ghost girl named Lilic was sitting in the corner playing with her little brother Pahith. She waves and smiles the best that a spirit can. Vèolité smiles and waves as well, Alfisch doesn’t even notice them. Vèolité presses the up button and immediately the grate elevator door clings to life, making a far too audible sound. It almost sounds like the chain snaps before the door actually open to the marble floored and cracked mirror walled elevator. The grate closes and so do the doors. The light bulb overhead flickers.
“Nice place you’ve got here sis.” Alfisch says. Vèolité ignores him and presses the button to go to the third level. The elevator makes it slow descent upward. Veolite leans on the wall and stares at her brother.
“What is the east like?” She asks him. He looks surprised by the question.
“What do you mean? Have you not heard the stories of the East?” He asks with a slight grin.
“Father has told me the stories all the time, how can’t I have. I just want to know if the stories are true.” She said. He smiled as the elevator made a churning noise, like a roar coming from the belly of a great beast.
“What is it that you want to know that is true of the East?” He asked and leaned inward.
“Are there really burned libraries there? Libraries of holographs?” She asks, a certain curiosity brightens in her eyes.
Alfisch thinks about this for a moment as the elevator jumps, shutters and nearly stops. He speaks without notice of the elevator’s latest terror. “There are ancient, destroyed cities made of sand. They are believed to be the cities of Ashcot and Merytl, but we are not sure. I have only seen one Library of holographs in Merytl, or the area that is supposed to be Merytl. I found only a few holograms, those which I found depicted a story of romance. I destroyed it.” Vèolité gasped.
“Why? How could you? Do you know how valuable they probably were? Have you see the society that we live in? Scrolls and bound books!” She snapped. He didn’t get another word in edgewise as the elevator stopped, the grate opened to a long hall. There was a single pallid light buzzed in the center of the hall. The doors were all closed. Outside several of them there were piles of trash, and some of them had doormats. Many of them had grimed and greased doors. At the end of the hall there as a single door with a dead plant outside of it, and a pile of trash on the other side of the door. There was a small doormat that read Wipe your paws.
“This is home.” She said and she pulled out the ring of keys again. She selected a key that had a rusty, golden rose on its butt. She twisted the key in the knob four times before there was a click and the door slid open enough for her to push it.
Thunder rumbled as she closed the door, and a quick flash of lighting also shook the room. The chandelier in the main parlor jingled and swung for a moment. It buzzed lightly.
Down the hall, they entered the living room slash kitchen slash dining room. The dining room table was covered in large, three thousand page leather-bound books, and ancient papyrus maps from one of the Ancient Eastern cities. There were ornaments and other trinkets of intricate design scattered across the table as well. There were also a few Phoenix feathers lying around the table, though Vèolité didn’t know where the Phoenix was at the moment. The kitchen was an agglomeration of broken plates, thick cook books, boiling pots, bird’s feet and jars of eyes and weeds littered the counters. The living room had a small, antediluvian couch, a coffee table where a tea set sat with old tea within it, and there was a bookshelf, high as the ceiling, stockpiled with books.
“When did you move here?” Alfisch asked with some astonishment.
“We moved here the week after you left for the East. After you left us alone.” She said, and she didn’t say another word as she whisked herself and Alfisch down the next hall.
“In this hall, there were four doors. The door to the immediate left was a bathroom, shabby and degrading. To the immediate right there was a study in which she did not find her father. The next door to the right was her bedroom, messy but home. The last door was her father’s bed room at the very end of the hall. She knocked and heard nothing. Thunder stomped and she knocked again—he probably hadn’t heard her. She opened the door, the door knob nearly getting stuck in its position in the process.
“Father?” She called out, looking across his bed room. He had a four poster bead that was right under the window. The window itself was covered by vestige bars that were wrapped in thick, sage colored vines. There were books scattered here too, and figurines, sculptures, and other assorted items that her father kept. There were a few of her mother’s paintings hung, crooked, on the walls. There was a dresser, the drawers of which were pushed out, and clothes were hanging over their rims like overflowing water.
She then noticed the papyrus note on the dresser. She picked it up and all that was there was a badly painted arrow towards the bathroom. She and Alfisch hurried into the bathroom. There was another arrow pointing to the shower. Vèolité suddenly inhaled sharply.
“No.” She said and she ran over to the shower. “No, no, no! Please—”
Behind the curtain, her father was in the bathtub, his head hanging on his neck by only a little fabric of skin. The skin served as a hinge. The bathtub was full of water and blood. There was a sickle on the floor where he’d dropped it. Vèolité covered her mouth with both hands and staggered back. Alfisch grabbed her and held her. She turned in on him. She cried into his chest. He could only gawk at the scene before him. He had come, and he had not been expecting to see this. His father dead in the water.
“There’s a note.” Alfisch suddenly said. She looked back and saw, floating in the water there was a sheet of papyrus. She pulled away from Alfisch and pulled the paper out of the murky water.
I did not do this because I do not love you. I did not do this because I hated you. I did this to protect you. I did this to save you from the Tenebris that is to come. They would have come for me anyways, they would have come for you next. The East is where you belong. I had kept you away from it for far too long. It is where you need to be because you are their only weapon to defeat them. I cannot tell you who they are, for reasons you need not know at this moment. Do not search for my soul. Stop searching for souls. Every soul does not want to be found. Some souls just need to lay to rest. The souls that do want to be found will come to you. Leave, go East. Burn the house, hide yourself and get out. Leave.
I love you.
She turned the message over and saw that there was a poorly drawn picture of their family. Alfisch was hugging Vèolité. Their mother and father were over them. They were all smiling. Vèolité dropped it.
“I drew that years ago…” She said and she she cried. She fell into Alfisch’s arms and cried.
Thunder.
TO BE CONTIUNED IN EPISODE 2
OUT OF THE WATER, INTO THE STORM