Don't Look Back

...

Ink and paint dripped along a canvas. The lines became trees and twigs, the blotches became leaves, and, in the center of the canvas, the ink ran as if across a river rock, twisting into strange currents and oblong shapes which were then further twisted by an invisible brush into something that could be recognized.

As her mind became fuller, the drops of consciousness streaming steadily into the cup of her paltry existence, she found herself back where she had always been: on the edge of that same grove. The skies overhead were gray, and the trees were barren, meaning that not much time had passed since the last time she woke up, or else so much time that the cycle had started again from the beginning. The latter was an oddly tempting suggestion since the man who usually greeted her was not there, but, rather, it was the bohemian sitting atop a wooden throne that appeared to be carved from a single log and overrun with vines. He was surrounded by a feast: roast birds and beef, fruits abound, and all atop beautifully carved tables. He was joined by others, men with jolly faces, curling horns, and hairy lower halves with backward knees that ended in hooves. They were raucously partaking of the food, laughing among one another and seeming to find pure ecstasy in each other's company. The bohemian, in contrast, was serene, almost appearing to be asleep; slumped forward with his bearded chin in his hand.

She reached out towards him on a whim, only then realizing that she had a hand. Here, for the first time, she actually existed. She looked down at herself, finding only a body. "Only" because there were no discerning or individual features. In fact, it didn't seem to have any appearance at all: only the vague outline of a human person. Without sex. Without identity. Without purpose. Without even a name.

But this, she realized, was all she needed. She was no longer an outsider. The door was opened, and, if she wanted to approach, she could.

She began to push aside the brush in her way.

WHERE ARE YOU GOING, CHILD?

She stopped. With her freedom, she knew she could turn around and see who or whatever was speaking to her, what had, in some sense, made her, and shown her this vision, but she chose not to. She was far too afraid of him.

"I... want to join the feast. Can't I?"

YOU SURELY CAN, BUT WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO? HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING, CHILD? THE SNAKE HAS LURED YOU INTO HIS TRAP ONCE, AND HE KILLED YOU BY THOSE MEANS, AND YET YOU RETURN TO HIS POISON? HAVE I RAISED YOU TO BE SO FOOLISH?

"What?" She almost turned around in sheer confusion, but stopped herself, "He's killed me already? Am I dead?"

HOW WOULD YOU CALL YOURSELF ALIVE? WHERE IS YOUR BODY? WHERE IS YOUR HEART? WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

"What is my name?"

YOU ARE NOT EVEN SO MUCH AS A GHOST. YOU ARE NOTHING BUT THE SHATTERED REMNANTS OF A BROKEN HEART, HALF-ASSEMBLED INTO SOMETHING LIKE A MIND. A SPECK OF DUST THAT ONLY EXISTS BECAUSE IT IS SO SMALL AND INSIGNIFICANT THAT IT MANAGED TO SLIP THROUGH THE STRAINER. DIE AGAIN, AND THE BROKEN PIECES WILL BE SO SMALL THAT NOT EVEN I COULD PUT THEM BACK TOGETHER. IF NOTHING ELSE-

A crooked and withered branch, like the outstretched hand of a witch, reached past her to gesture towards the feast.

-BEHOLD THE STORY'S END. IF NONEXISTENCE STILL APPEALS TO YOU, THEN BY ALL MEANS TAKE OF THE FRUIT. MY DISAPPOINTMENT WILL BE ALL THAT REMAINS OF YOUR FOLLY.

She turned back to the grove and, if she had a face, her brow would've furrowed. The food looked delectable, and, although she knew by now that the man was dangerous, he also seemed to be a man who treated his friends well, and, if she could be his friend, then she would also be treated well, right? More than that was another, equally penetrating feeling that caused her to wonder how long she had been here; how long she had even been alive. It occurred to her now that, if the presence behind her was to be believed, she had never met a human in her life. She wanted to. She longed to. She wanted so desperately for someone to touch her, to hold her, to look her in the eye and say, 'you exist.'

Yet the warning she had heard seemed to be an informed one, so, for now, she gripped her shoulder and bit her tongue, waiting anxiously for what would happen next.

After a while, she heard a distant, whimpering sound. As it came closer, she realized that mere 'whimpering' did not do the sound justice: it was full-throated sobbing. Its source, the musician called Orpheus, approached the edge of the grove as a shambling mess of a man; more dead than alive.

"Why the Hell are you still here!? Go!" He shouted as he flung out a pale and skeletal arm, "Leave this place! I have no desire for your games!"

As he said this, his strength left him and, bracing himself on a nearby tree, he fell to his knees; his long, sunshine hair spilling into the dirt.

"Games?" The bohemian's face was unmoved. For once, he appeared totally stoic, "Did I ever lie to you? Was the place I took you not the entrance to the underworld? I can understand your sorrow, but I never did anything but help you in your quest. You have no right to blame me if you failed in spite of that."

Orpheus slipped from his brace on the tree, planting himself into the ground, as if crushed by the weight of the world.

"You're right. Lord Hades gave me a trial, and I failed, and I have no right to blame you for that." He turned up with a fierce scowl, "But-! You knew this would happen! You knew I would fail! This- all of this!- was just a scheme to torment me! From the beginning all you ever wanted was my pain!"

The bohemian pouted. The satyrs that surrounded him watched with interest, though with faces that disguised any emotion other than glib pleasure. 

"No, no, no, dear boy. All I've ever wanted was your pleasure... although it is true that one can't appreciate pleasure without a degree of pain..."

The musician took a breath as if to respond, but bit his lip and grit his teeth, bowing deeper into the dead grass as sobs broke whatever retort he had planned.

"... I'm a failure..."

"No! You're not a failure!" The bohemian leaned back, crossed his legs and gestured wildly towards the crumpled heap of a man with a toothy grin, "Tell me boy, what good is a man who will not look upon a woman? What good is a husband who will not look upon his wife? All of this was a trial, a painful one, to test your love for your wife, and you have passed, my boy!"

The satyrs began to clap and whoop wildly, and Orpheus looked up with confusion colored by the faint glimmer of hesitant hope.

"Now, without any further ado! Take your reward!"

From behind the throne, a woman stepped out. She wore a white veil from her neck to her knees: a translucent mantle that left all of her beautiful, pale skin bare beneath the cloth. Above her fair breasts and atop her dainty shoulders was a flower of a face with curling green hair and yellow eyes.

"You were right," The bohemian continued, "I did know you would fail. I knew you would fail because the thing you sought was right here all along."

The woman crossed her arms behind her back, pushing out her chest with a womanly smile that set even the observer's non-existent heart aflutter. She could only imagine the sort of desire running through her husband's head and heart...

His mouth was agape, but one could make out a change in his expression as his eyes began to dry.

"What are you waiting for, boy? You were punished for looking at her before, but now you may touch her; you may have her in any way you like. She is your wife, after all."

He looked back to the ground, and his shoulders began to shake.

The woman's expression turned into concern. One could not help but be moved by the sadness in her gorgeous eyes.

"Dear? Is something wrong?"

Orpheus appeared to choke on something, and then seemed to be sobbing again, but as the volume raised, as he turned his face to the bohemian and the woman called his wife, as he picked himself up from the dirt, he was laughing. It was a mad, cackling laugh that put fear in the heart. Even the bohemian's face turned sour.

Eventually, after nearly a full minute of laughing, the musician began to compose himself, "Oh... thank you, stranger. I needed a good laugh."

"Yes..." The man gave a half-smile, seeming to be at a loss in the still-developing situation, "A reunion is certainly a cause for joy."

"You... You idiot!" Orpheus gave a mad smile of his own, holding back his laughter, "Do you know where I've been? What I've seen? I came here after looking upon her very soul: the complete and purified essence of my beloved, and yet you think I'll be fooled with this pathetic imitation? I'll have nothing to do with you or your illusory whore!"

He turned to walk away.

"Then there will be no issue if I have my way with her?"

He turned sharply, murder in his eyes, "What?"

"Haha! A jest!" He lowered his glare, shadows covering his golden eyes, "But why would you be bothered by that, hm? If she is nothing but an 'illusory whore', then why should it be a problem if I treat her as such?"

"Because-!" He bit his tongue, calming his righteous anger, and turning away, "As much as I'd like to say that I could stop you from desecrating her memory, I know I lack that power. I can't stop you, but I can stop you from desecrating my own memory of her. Goodbye."

"No!" The woman cried, tears dripping down her cheeks with trails of verdant green, "Don't leave me here! Orpheus!"

"Quiet!" His anger returned with a vengeance, "You-! You are not my Eurydice!"

"I am! Orpheus!"

"You're not! Whore! Lying whore!"

She began to run towards him, her hands clutching at her own chest.

As she made halfway between them, Orpheus pulled a knife from the inside of his tunic, and she skid to a halt with a stopped heart.

"No further! Stay back! Stay back you foul temptress!"

"Orpheus..." 

She took a tentative step forward, holding back her tears.

"No-!" He jabbed outwards with the knife, but she made no movements backwards.

She stopped for nothing more than a moment before apparently seizing her resolve, letting her tears fall as she rushed forwards with open arms to embrace him-

He slashed with his knife and a line of blood painted the grass. Her sobs became silent, stifled by the blood in her throat that filled her lungs and spilt across her translucent mantle before she ultimately fell onto the grass; her tearstained eyes and bloodstained chest staring forever into the sky above.

"He killed her," the shadow muttered to herself, feeling as if she would cry but knowing that no tears would come, "All this time, all this work, all this love, and he killed her? He killed his own wife?"

SILENCE, CHILD, WITH YOUR FALSE ACCUSATIONS. FOR THOUGH YOU KNOW NOT WHAT YOU SAY, HE KNOWS PRECISELY WHAT HE DOES. PAY ATTENTION.

Orpheus stared silently at the corpse of the woman at his feet for a long time, before finally whispering to himself, "She bleeds..."

"Of course she bleeds," The bohemian replied gravely, "She's your wife, or... she was."

"She wasn't! That was not Eurydice!"

"And why not, hm? How would you know? What is a 'Eurydice', anyways?"

"She's my wife, you bastard!"

"Your wife, is she? So if you made this woman your wife would she then be 'Eurydice'?"

"No!"

"Are you sure? If you loved her, cherished her, and took a marital bed with her, would she not be 'Eurydice'?"

"No!"

"If you caressed her cheek and called her Eurydice, would she not then be?"

"No!"

"And why not? If you believed her to be Eurydice, why would she not be? You called that bleeding woman there an illusion, but how can you be sure that this thing you vainly dare to call 'Eurydice' wasn't an illusion to begin with? What is love if not a trick that the heart plays on the soul?"

"You-" He was visibly shaking now, "You inhuman bastard! These are people! You can't replace them as easily as furniture! Have you no love at all!? Is there no humanity in your heart!?"

He was unfazed, "A curious comparison. You say people can't be replaced as easily as furniture?"

He stood up and cast out his arms. At once, it seemed as if a plague of locusts, hitherto unseen, rose from the grove in a dark cloud to reveal the hideous shapes underneath. The satyrs, once jolly and jovial, were now covered in oily, black fur with sickly, toad-like skin, warty noses, the eyes of goats and the long, twisting tongues of snakes with fangs to match. But what was worse was that the food atop the tables were, in truth, corpses themselves: chests ripped open with organs dispersed among the plates, and each with vacant, bloodstained smiles and violet eyes; the same was now true of the corpse at Orpheus' feet, now a dark-skinned woman with darker hair. Finally, the tables themselves, and the throne that the dancing god had been sitting upon himself until a moment ago, were people too, living people all in various states of undress, but with the same empty smiles as the corpses. They rose from their places with popping joints, shambling into position to surround him.

The god's voice echoed as all the living corpses spoke in tandem, "And...why...not?"

The musician's white face somehow turned a shade paler, "So this... this is what 'pleasure' means to you? Slavery? Living death?"

The bohemian's face was unchanged: a flat face with less emotion than a statue.

"Just as cold is the absence of heat, so is pleasure the absence of pain. Do you truly think that inner peace is so revolting?"

"You... you are what is so disgusting to me. You and your lies." He held his own knife to his throat, "I would far rather be dead when I die and living while I live. All the more when death would reunite me with the one I love."

"I can do that for you right now, no pain or death required; now or ever again. She'll be yours', just as I said. I promise everything you want and more if you accept these gifts."

"I would rather die."

"Careful what you wish for." He lifted one hand, and the smiling, shambling horde began to move forward. Seeing that Orpheus neither moved nor flinched, the dancing god smiled.

"You won't run?"

The musician smiled, though a bead of sweat formed on his increasingly pale forehead.

"Why would I, whose want for death is strong enough to set his heart aflame, run from the Reaper when he presents itself?"

"Hoh? Perhaps you will change your mind when I explain what is about to happen." His hands crossed behind his back, "You are about to be skinned alive. Your flesh will be rent from your bones, the bone from its marrow, and even the insides of your organs will learn the light of day. You will know pain more excruciating than most will ever experience, and, the very moment you wish for relief, the moment you cry out, 'Please, god, gods, please, I will give anything if only to suffer no longer', your soul will belong to me- regardless of what convictions you pretend to hold. I will now give you my fruit, and let me say, boy, that there has never been anyone who has refused my wine once they've tasted it."

His smile grew and contorted into something inhuman, "Running is the only hope you have, for there is no one in pain who does not wish for relief, and no one who would leave my relief once it is given."

"Then I will be the first. For there is no pain you could inflict worse than what I've lost, nor any pleasure greater than having her with me. You have nothing with which to threaten me, nor nothing to offer me in return. Whatever game you have forced me to play, you lost it before it ever began."

Without warning, one of the maenads rushed forward, launching himself at Orpheus and clamping his jaw around his neck. A wail caught in his throat and, with a gush of blood, Orpheus was on the ground. The other smiling ones rushed onto the dogpile to tear into his sickly flesh with nothing but claws and teeth; laughing gleefully all the while. He screamed, he cried, and the bohemian looked on with joy in his eyes, but as moment passed by agonizing moment, the shadow at the edge of the grove quivering with shock and nausea, the smile began to waver, and glibness turned to anger. Even as the maenads tore into his flesh, cannibalizing what little muscle lay on his bones, Dionysus's teeth were bared and grit with rage.

And thus, all the figures evaporated into nothing, as if turned into oily vapor. But, this time, the grove did not wholly disappear, and the shadow remained in a forest under a dark violet sky.

With the coast cleared, she ran forward and collapsed onto the ground where Orpheus had just laid, shifting through the grass and dirt as if expecting to find him buried there.

"Where is he!? What happened!?"

The voice startled her in its matter-of-factness, HE WON. HE DIED, TRULY DIED, AND HIS PURE HEART PASSED ON UNTAINTED.

"Is that... is that what happened to me?"

DO YOU FEEL UNTAINTED? DO YOU TRULY BELIEVE YOU HAVE PASSED ON? OR DO YOU FEEL TRAPPED? DO YOU NOT FEEL INCOMPLETE? THERE IS A REASON WHY YOU ARE HERE AND HE IS NOT.

"So, then, I failed?"

YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING, CHILD. SHE WHO DOES NOT EXIST CANNOT SIN, AND NEITHER DOES A DAUGHTER INHERIT THE SINS OF HER MOTHER, NO MATTER HOW GRIEVOUS. YOU ARE NAUGHT BUT A WITHERED FRUIT FALLEN FROM A WICKED TREE.

"What do you mean?"

TURN AROUND. FIND OUT.

Her voice caught in her throat, "I can't."

WHY NOT?

"I'm afraid."

OF YOUR OWN DEATH?

"-Of you."

The woods were quiet for a long time. Eventually, the breeze came again.

THEN I WILL MOVE SO THAT YOU MAY GAZE ON THE TRUTH.

The trees began to crack and creak around her, and she dared not lift her eyes from the ground. Eventually, the wind blew from the opposite direction.

LOOK. SEE THE FATE OF YOUR FORMER SELF.

Slowly, her shadowed self turned around, shuffling and crawling across the dirt so as not to accidentally catch sight of something she shouldn't have, but, in a moment, she realized there was nothing she could see which could ever be worse than this.

She was a woman; beautiful, at least by a certain standard, and definitely not unattractive. One could tell at a glance, by her makeup, her smooth brown skin and well-kept inky hair, that she took great pride and care in her appearance; a woman at least as or more vain than most. But this, like lipstick on a skeleton, only made her current state all the more horrific. At first, it seemed that she was hung up on the tree as if strung on a cross, with her torso hanging from the trunk and her arms splayed in stiff separation, but as the grotesque imagery drew her in, the lack of blood became the focus which led to the truth: the strung-up woman and the tree were one in the same.

Below the ribs, skin turned to twisted bark which turned and contorted on itself, becoming thinner than her hips would've been, slender as they already were, before joining with the soil. Her arms, similarly, reached toward the sky as naked twigs and branches with no leaves or fruit to speak of. And her face, her beautiful, broken face, hung from a twisted neck so that the shadow was left staring precisely into the hole; one half of her face was shattered like porcelain so that she had but one eye and one ear. The glowing, violet eye stared vacantly into nothingness.

"What happened to her... to... me?"

A SEED WAS PLANTED, AND IT GREW TOWARDS IT'S SUN, THUS BECOMING A TREE.

"Does that mean..." Her heart seized with fear, "Every tree here is-"

YES. EVERY TREE HERE WAS ONCE A HUMAN SOUL, AND NOW NOTHING HALF AS MUCH. A PURELY VEGETATIVE EXISTENCE WHICH KNOWS NOTHING BUT THE DESIRE FOR THE LIGHT OF THEIR SUN, WHICH IT RECEIVES IN UNCEASING, GLUTTONOUS ABUNDANCE. IN TRUTH, TWAS THE DESIRE WHICH MADE THEM A TREE, AND NOT THE TREE WHICH MADE THEM DESIRE.

"But- what is the sun? I don't see one here."

INDEED. TO EACH HIS OWN SUN. TO EACH HIS OWN CORRUPTION FOR THE DARK ONE TO EXPLOIT AND PERVERT.

"And me? Her?"

A SPECIAL CASE. THE TRANSFORMATION OUGHT BE GRADUAL: A GAME OF FORSAKEN INCHES AND STOLEN MILES, BUT THIS ONE WAS MADE BY FORCE, THE STRESS OF WHICH CAUSED HER TO FRACTURE, THUS CREATING YOU: HER SISTER, HER DAUGHTER, HER OTHER SELF. THIS IS THE FIRST DIFFERENCE. THE SECOND IS HIM. HE KEEPS HIS LIGHT FROM HER. HE WISHES HER TO REMAIN PARTLY HERSELF SO THAT HE MAY FIND PLEASURE IN HER TORMENT, AND HER LETHARGIC DESCENT INTO MADNESS. THE RIVER STYX NEVER KNEW A SLOWER FERRY THAN HERS.

She stumbled back, gripping at the left half of her face, where, contrary to the pearlescent smoothness of her body, was flesh and blood. She could feel the natural eye that laid there, and wondered what its color was.

"Is there anything we can do for her? For me?"

SHE SEES BUT DOES NOT WATCH. SHE HEARS BUT DOES NOT LISTEN. SHE IS A BEAST: LESS THAN HUMAN BUT MORE THAN A PLANT, AND WHO COULD GUESS WHAT GOES ON IN THE MIND OF A DOG?

She reached out and caressed what remained of the midriff.

"Can you hear me?"

"Can you hear me?"

"...Aisha?"

...

Aisha Alghul sat up with a start. Sweat dripped from her brow as her body curled up to guard her from something that she could not have known. She tried desperately to sort through the scattered and blurred images that had appeared to her while she slept.

"Sleep well?"

She shot back, seizing the covers up and over her in some vain attempt at protecting herself. There, sitting on the edge of her bed, was Dionysus, Caster, eyeing her with his sly, golden eyes.

"Were they good dreams?"

She caught her breath and spoke honestly, as one tends to do when caught off guard, "I-I can't remember. I usually don't."

"Well, that's boring" He pursed his lips, "Typical, yes, but boring nonetheless. Oh well-" 

He slapped the side of the bed, "Much to do and not much time to do it. We must get you acquainted with our new friend Archer."

"Archer?"

"Yes, there were many developments in the night, so, my sleeping beauty, come along and meet our guests."

"Yes." 

She slowly stepped out from under the covers, but couldn't shake the feeling that some horrible creature was lying in wait under her bed, waiting for her to leave the safety of the sheets so that it could grab her ankle and drag her into some shadowy Hell.

"Let's."

....