Maybe next fall when I'm taking 14 credits and not going home every second I'll actually get close.
Current word count: 14,350
Anyway. Here's the entirety of chapter 3 that I thought I posted but apparently didn't. Excuse the length. (and the over-cheeseyness of it all)
Chapter Three
Kale opened his eyes and found himself on the floor, covered
in sweat. He could not remember his dreams, but he remembered the pain he felt
while in them. It was an indescribable pain—not in the sharpness, but in the
emotion of it. He didn’t feel depressed or worthless. He simply felt weak. He
was angry, but not irate. He thought the discovery meant he would soon be
standing over someone putting a knife in their chest or mauling them with the
claws he was sure to grow at some point.
However, it still took him several hours to pull himself
away from his apartment and find something to eat. He looked at his watch upon
reaching a café. It read 4:35pm. The shop was almost empty except for two
elderly couples who almost mirrored each other on opposite sides of the room.
Kale ordered a sandwich and sat down where he could see out the window.
People walked briskly down the sidewalk; they were almost
invisible. They all blended into each other, and the cars rushing behind them
did not make the scene any less trippy. Kale felt separated from the
unnecessary mess of people and machines. He felt outside.
One man who passed the window stared at Kale while he
walked. That was the last free moment Kale had.
He stood up, threw away the rest of his food, and stormed
out the doors and down the sidewalk. It took him only 20 minutes of angered
steps to reach the mysterious building that held the darkroom and most of his
memories of Corten. The stairs were behind him in seconds, and before Kale knew
he was there, he was banging on the door with the force of a police officer
with a warrant for arrest.
There was no sound from inside the building until the door
opened dramatically. Kale’s eyes met Corten’s as he stood on the other side.
“You promised me answers.” Kale demanded.
“I knew you’d come back.” Corten answered without a single
emotion crossing his face. He did not scold Kale for his demands, but welcomed
him inside with a step back and a swing of his arm.
“Where are you depositing me today?”
“There will be no deposits for a long while now.” Corten
closed the door and faced Kale.
“No other poor youngling souls to destroy?”
“Your soul was destroyed a long time ago. You simply weren’t
aware of it.”
Kale did not ask what that meant. He would wait a little longer
and receive the full story of what he was and why he was not aware of it.
“Shall we?” Corten led Kale down the short hall for what
felt like the hundredth time that week. They passed through the darkroom,
Corten guiding Kale by his arm, and entered the closet-looking meeting room.
Again. Kale sat, and Corten stood behind the chair opposite him.
“Is this the only room through that door?” Kale asked.
“Of course not. There’s the darkroom, this one, and two
others. The darkroom is the only unique room in this section of the floor,
though. The other three are identical in every way. We use them for meetings,
presentations, negotiations, and a few other things.”
“Will you tell me the other things at some point?”
“There’s no sense in hiding anything from you now, but you
wouldn’t understand some of the things we do quite yet, so I won’t befuddle
your mind.”
“Fair enough.” Kale nodded. “Are you planning to sit and
tell me what happened to my life?”
“Explanations, yes, but I will not sit right now. I was
waiting for your questions to end so I could fetch some of the boys.”
“The boys?”
“Blake, Enya, and Alexander are in the other room. They can
help explain.”
“Oh. I’ve never heard you refer to them that way before.”
“Human habit. My apologies. Can you contain yourself for a
moment while I fetch them?”
“Sure.”
Corten left one meeting room and presumably went to another.
In a minute or two, he was back with Blake, Enya, and Alexander trailing him.
The door was closed, and everyone sat down besides Corten. He instead leaned
against the door and shut his eyes.
“You all go ahead. I need to collect my thoughts.” Corten
said to no one in particular.
“Well then,” Enya began. “I may as well start. A lot of
things will take a while for you to understand. I ask that you be patient with
us. You will understand, more than
you wish to, in time.”
“I heard that.” Kale remembered those words. They were
spoken in his head the day of his adventures in the backwood. “Something said
it in my head.”
“Oh, that was probably Blake. He’s been known to listen to
your thoughts and give us reports.”
“I’m part of how we know you so well. I kept track of you in
the backwood, also. We needed to know where your head was, metaphorically
speaking.” Blake explained.
“What exactly do you do? I—I mean, I know Enya said he was a
‘presenter’ or whatever that means. But you didn’t say what you were—are.”
“I remember. I didn’t want to confuse you. At that point,
you were not even aware of your supernatural condition. You probably still will
not fully understand, but I am a mentem
lector. I keep track of thoughts and dreams.”
“And you’ve been keeping track of mine?”
“Precisely.”
“Well that’s easy enough to understand.”
“For now, that is all you need to know about me.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll go next.” Enya spoke. “As you said, I am a presenter.
You may have seen one aspect of my job during the ceremony when you came here
the first time. Those were my cards. They may have seemed randomly strewn
across the table, but they were placed in precise locations to be analyzed. The
blue one I selected was the redemption card. I was proposing we send you into
the backwood to determine your state of normalcy and dedication. You seemed
solid from what Corten had observed so far, but we wanted to be sure so we
could reveal your state to you at the same time as your race.”
“So is that what you meant when you said I was ‘redeemed’?”
“Yes. We knew you had taken a permanent human form, but we
needed to determine your state of mind, as Blake said. We wanted to be able to
tell you that you were redeemed when you woke up. If you hadn’t woken up when
Alexander slapped you, that would mean you had yet to be redeemed, and we would
have had to retrieve you.”
“Wait. Alexander slapped me? I wondered why my face hurt.”
Corten snickered, still against the door.
“He did. It was necessary, I assure you. But it doesn’t
matter. You were likely redeemed a long time ago, by someone you no longer
know. I’m sure it was an emotional moment. I am sorry you will never be able to
remember it.”
“Um… Thank you?”
“You are quite welcome. Now, my job as presenter usually
entails planning and describing those plans to the others. Extremely menial
stuff. But I am also typically the handler of the younglings—what we call
demons who either do not know their heritage or do not have a grasp of their
abilities. In your situation, however, you met and connected with Corten first,
so he has become your handler.”
“My handler?”
“Don’t be offended by the title. It is merely that. He
guides you in the darkroom and interacts with you outside this building. The
rest of us are free to take care of the rest of our duties without worrying if
you are lost or in the middle of a breakdown or some similar situation. Corten
watches you, with a little of Blake’s help in the mental area.”
“That sounds reasonable enough, I guess. Is it strange that
I’m taking all of this in without even asking myself if it’s true?”
“You know in yourself what is true. It is your life; you
cannot escape it, and you will never be able to deny the realities you face
because they are a part of you as much as your flesh is.”
“Well wasn’t that deep for five in the afternoon.”
“Oh, it’s not five in the afternoon,” Corten said, finally
opening his eyes and lifting his head from the door.
“How would you know? You’ve practically been sleeping this
whole time.”
“I have been doing anything but sleeping, youngling. I have
been plotting your imminent doom.”
“Wait, I thought…” Kale momentarily looked frightened.
“I’m joking. I was listening to the conversations and
planning my own speech about your history.”
“Oh.”
“Back to the time of day, it is almost seven in the
evening.”
“What? How is that possible?”
“Time passes quickly in the darkroom. That is truly the only
explanation I can give you at the moment.”
“I… will be sure to remember that.”
“Kale, we know there’s a lot going on in your head right
now. We’re willing to give you whatever information you ask for as long as it’s
in the right time. We’re also willing to give you space if you need to think or
process something apart from our company. If you need to rest, let us know. We
will not judge you. We understand you better than everyone.” Alexander’s
statement sat in the air for a moment before Kale finally responded with
gratitude.
“I appreciate that, I guess. I’m fine, though. I really want
to continue. Can we—can you tell me who I am?”
“Sure. Your name is Kale Rietan Perford. You are 19 years of
age, and you life in Torman City by yourself. You have no parents or siblings
that you know of, and you keep no company. You graduated last year from Torman
High School in the top 25% of your class, but you attend no university. You are
perfectly content to explore the city by yourself and never accomplish much of
anything. About a week ago, you met Corten in line at a café and even after barely
knowing him, followed him into a creepy building to meet a creepy, uniform
group of men sitting around a table with what you thought were poker cards.
“You were freaked out by everything overall, and extremely
confused as well, yet you chose to come back and, ultimately, recently found
out you are not who you thought you were—not even of the human race. This fact
confused you even more and caused you to be angry toward every last one of us
although you know we did nothing we should not have done. You still don’t
understand what is going on or what your future holds, but you were willing to
return to us for answers, and we are willing to give them to you.”
“Um, wow. Thank you so
much for detailing my recent life story.” Kale’s head shook in awe of the rant
Alexander had just completed. He chuckled before continuing. “But that wasn’t
what I was asking, and you know it. I heard the sarcasm in your voice.”
“Well done. You can detect simple tonal qualities. Now, we
must strongly consider creating a course in which you can learn how to ask better questions. What did you
really want to know, since everything I just told you was supremely obvious?”
“My past. I want to know where I came from, how I managed to
think I was human all that time, why I can’t point to anything abnormal in my
entire childhood that makes being a demon make sense.”
“We’ve taken measures to assure that you didn’t find out
until we couldn’t keep it from you any longer. Those specific measures are not
particularly important. We may tell you someday. Your parents were both demons
as well, the same type and heritage of course. You were too young to realize it
when they were sacrificed, which is why you were never told, and why you don’t
know them. The fact that you are redeemed kept you from experiencing
‘abnormalities’ as you call them.”
“Why were my parents sacrificed?”
“They were chosen. It was not up to them, and your presence
in their lives did not change the fact that they had to uphold their duty.”
“Who chose them?”
“Satan, who else?”
“That… is not what I expected you to say.”
“What did you expect me to say?”
“I don’t know, some committee or leader.”
“Satan is the leader. He makes all the decisions.”
“Okay. I guess that makes sense. You keep saying I’m
‘redeemed’. What does that mean? How does it work?” Everyone had remained still
through Kale’s conversation with Alexander until this point. Corten walked
around the table as they continued to talk and took a chair, sliding it away
from those next to him, and directed it away from the table. Kale could only
see his profile as he sat in the chair.
“Redemption is something that a demon cannot do themselves.
You cannot redeem your own body. Someone close to you has to do it for you. You
were redeemed by your brother.”
“How? What do they have to do?”
“Many believe it involves petitioning Satan for the freedom
of the other. Others think it has to come from a human sacrifice. Still others
do not believe it can happen at all, or that it can fail very easily.”
“Which one is the truth?”
“All three. The sacrifice of a human is the least truthful
of the three, as it does not involve a human in most successful cases. Those
who believe it often choose to so that they do not have to sacrifice
themselves, which results in a more complete redemption. If the sacrifice is a
demon, it is more wholly powerful and long-lasting, if the redeemed party
wishes it to be once they are of age and understanding.”
“I’m not sure I got all of that, but it’s whatever. You said
my… brother sacrificed himself for me?”
“Yes. It was more effective than any we had ever seen
before.”
“I did not know I had a brother.”
“You wouldn’t. The sacrifice does not result in complete
annihilation of the subject, but it damages them. It is much more difficult for
them to be redeemed after the fact. Redemptions are rare.”
“Is there any chance my brother will ever be redeemed? Could
I do it?”
“Your case is an unusual one; that is what made it so
powerful. Your brother was redeemed before his sacrifice.”
“So, what does that mean for him?”
“He has been damaged, as the sacrifice does, but the damage
was not permanent as we expected it to be. It has actually strengthened him
quite significantly. He has his temper tantrums—they are almost like echoes of
the incident—but he has benefited from it more than any of us could have
imagined.”
“Can I… Is he in hell?”
“No, he is here.”
“Will I ever meet him?”
“You already have.” Corten angled his head down as Alexander
spoke and began tapping patterns onto the table next to him.
“What? What do you mean?”
“Corten is your brother.”
Kale looked at him in awe. He finally understood the
connection they had—he thought he had imagined it. He understood why he trusted
Corten without reason. He understood why Corten was his handler, why he offered
rides and food and comfort. He understood why Corten was always tense when the
group was talking about Kale like he wasn’t in the room listening, and he knew
the meaning of every sympathetic glance he had ever received from him.
Everything made sense like it had failed to before. Kale’s life was completely
a result of his brother, the brother he never knew but always trusted.
Corten had not moved for a few minutes, his hand resting on
his knee. The man didn’t even seem to be breathing. He simply stared into the
floor in front of him, looking afraid of the situation he found himself in.
“LOOK AT ME!” Kale yelled. Corten’s hand startled and his
head snapped up, eyes wide. The two looked at each other for a moment, Corten’s
eyes slowly relaxing and his body turning to align with his head. Kale tried to
speak multiple times, but no words came out. Finally, he choked and took in a
shuddering breath. Kale could see the fear still present in Corten’s eyes.
“Thank you,” Kale whispered, and Corten let out a heavy
breath he seemed to have been holding in. “I know I don’t really understand,
but thank you.”
“Kale, the fact that you’re thanking me means you understand
plenty. You’re welcome. I’m glad you’re here.” Corten smiled through tears
silently streaming down his face, then stood up and walked around the table.
Kale stood to meet him in an embrace he never thought would feel so complete.
They both laughed and patted each other on the back.
“You knew who I was,” Kale said as he pulled back enough to
look Corten in the face. “Last week in the café, you recognized me. That’s why
you asked about my book.”
“I just had to know if it was you. I heard your voice, and I
was sure, and I just had to try to tell you. I wanted you to understand.”
Corten dropped his hands from Kale’s shoulders so they were simply standing
facing each other. “After our first few conversations, I knew it would do you
more good than harm. You seemed so okay
with your life being so empty. I knew it could be more. I wanted you to have
that option. And, now, here you are. Here’s your option.” Corten stretched his
arms to either side, making a vague gesture to the room and the other men and
Kale’s possibility for a meaningful future. “Is this okay?”
“This is… more than I knew I could have.” Kale smiled and
tilted his head to the left a little. “I almost don’t know what to do with
myself.”
“Join us!” Corten exclaimed a little too quickly and
enthusiastically. “I mean, if you want. I want you to join us. We can teach you
everything.”
“I want to join you. I’m already a part, in a way. I guess
there’s more to find out, though.”
“So much
more. Welcome. Are you ready to start?”
I would like to know where it goes from here! Hope you can write more soon!
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