Human enigma
Elara
My eyes snapped open. I sat up with, strangely enough, the energy to do so. My stomach grumbled. The last time I had felt that hungry was well before I came to crash the party. Unfortunately, there was no party to be crashed. Sitting in front of me was him after all — a wretched-looking, out-for-a-man, at least that was what he called himself — with his head hung between his legs, his breath coming out in short pants beside my bed.
My bed? I looked beside me. I had a bed. I found myself feeling as though I had been in this moment before. His head moved slowly until he looked up. His eyes were filled with a strange removed emotion that made me want to genuinely ask what was wrong. But I wouldn’t. I bit my lip. I would never ask him anything; save the words, “leave me alone.”
“What do you want?” I barked, throwing the comforter off the bed and pulling it towards me, genuinely enjoying the soft fabric. “Oh damn, this is soft,” I thought.
He looked up to the ceiling and down at me. “It’s the only way,” he said. “It’s the only thing I could think of, the only reason.” He looked down at his hands. I found myself frowning.
“Get out,” I said. “Get out and I don’t want to see you again. This is all your fault.”
“How?” he looked up. “And here — and this — is because of you. You should have let me go. If you had when I told you to, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have gotten injured and it still hurts like—thanks. Thank you for nothing.”
I wanted to grab the pillow and throw it at him, but I doubted I had enough energy to grab it, much less throw it. He frowned.
“I saved your life,” he said slowly.
“Oh, you deserve an award then. A Nobel Peace Prize for saving my life — a life that you ruined. Thank you very much,” I snapped.
He frowned again. “Tell me, what is it you were doing in the human world? Why are you so eager to go back to that life?”
“That’s none of your business. You don’t deserve to know anything about me. You deserve to be dead,” I said in a dead-man’s expression but with a scarcely soft voice.
He was, for all intents and purposes, a near-broken man. His shoulders were slumped, his eyes devoid of fight, and his face was weary with lines as though he had aged several times over the last couple of weeks. I wanted to feel bad that maybe it was because of me. No — I interrupted the thought, jutting my chin out slightly in defiance.
“You don’t seem to understand something, human. You’re in my world. Your world is gone. You crossed a barrier the humans haven’t crossed in, what, centuries?”
“It was intentional,” he said. “If we didn’t—if humans continued coming, they would have cleared out one of our forests by now to build their tasteful city.” He chuckled. “Good. More than that, your kind did more damage than they could possibly quantify. Some people still remember; some of them are still alive from the last betrayal. They call it the Great Betrayal.”
I rolled my eyes. “You see, before, humans and my kind lived close — maybe even fucked together — until humans allied with demons and then the story changed. Which is as well with you, maybe, perhaps a generation or two, but after those short years — as humans call their lives — a few generations later no one cared about the witches. Instead they began to kill them, burn them. Those found with our blood were also killed. It was mostly the children, until finally we had to retreat into our own world, our source.”
It was obscured; perhaps every few decades we’d have one human stumble here depending on the side of the divide. He chuckled, looking at the floor as though it held the secrets of his story. “But they wouldn’t remember anything, you see. To cross the rift you need something you remember — items, to go for a brief moment — but you…” He looked at me. “I don’t know why. Maybe you’re just an exception to the rule. A very uncomfortable exception,” he said with a distant expression.
“That’s not my fault. I’m trying to—think about it. This is probably something somewhere: the reason why your barrier isn’t working. It’s not because of me. You can’t blame me— I wasn’t looking for you. Were you?”
He raised his eyebrow in a way that made me feel stupid, and I wasn’t stupid. “Okay, fine—then riddle me this: I’m human.” I placed a very weak hand on my chest. “How did I know that? It was very weird. Is there a sign that says ‘Keep off this property’ is there? Would it have been helpful?Yes. Did I tresspass? Yes. I don’t belong in this place, but when you look at it, it wasn’t so far from our cities. It was barely a stone’s throw. Really, if you come at it like that and I was desperate—very good, you know what they say: desperate times call for desperate measures.”
He shook his head. “You cannot kill someone for doing something that they didn’t know existed. That’s how it works in the human world. That’s how it should work anywhere. I didn’t know this place existed until I saw you people doing crazy stuff, so I got worried. I tried to leave—let me leave.”
I turned it back on him. “I will also say you must die.”
“It’s not based on the fact that you tried to leave; it’s the fact that you’ve seen it. Most other humans can’t handle the memories, but you have seen several of our kind transform into their beasts yet remain sane. Some humans would see it and go mad—their minds would fall apart. That’s how the magic works. But you’ve seen it several times, and yet you are…” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Some might say that you’re probably not—no, I’m willing to bet that if we look at you well enough, you might not be human.”
“You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know what I could be or what I couldn’t be. In fact, I’m done listening to what I am or what I am not, whether or not what I did was wrong. And after your strange grandstanding—” I snapped, “It’s not my fault you people could not protect your barrier well enough. You should put a couple of signs up deterring people, saying ‘Oh, don’t cross—this place is private property.’ I don’t know why you didn’t do that. Instead, you left it a chance and you kill innocent people who make the mistake of crossing over.”
“Yeah, really nice—you know, so perfect. Utopia you have to go on.” I sneered. “This is a utopia for humans, which is a utopia for us. Your world—you came here. Be it a mistake or intentional, you’re still here.”
“You think I came here intentionally? I’m not so stupid as to do that.” I chuckled bitterly. “I did it sometimes in desperation. Maybe you’ve never experienced it—being imperfect and knowing your own perfect little world, surrounded by people who do everything you want and say whatever you want to hear. You’re practically a king; you wouldn’t have missed a few glasses of wine, but perhaps you’d miss a drumstick here and there. It’s the poor human that had no idea they were stumbling into your fantasy world that you kill. Yeah, this may be your world, but it sucks and it’s stupid.”
I looked away. I was done with this conversation. “Get out,” I said, keeping my eyes on the window and waiting until I heard the soft click of the door closing. Maybe I was too harsh—heck no, I wasn’t too harsh. I told myself out loud they wanted to kill me. I didn’t know what his plan was for me, but he certainly did want to kill me. Or maybe he just wanted to stare at me till kingdom come.
I leaned back into the bed and enjoyed the soft comforter over my shoulders when suddenly the door opened along with a bit of arguing. I breathed in too fast, causing a slight dizzy spell and a wave of nausea. I covered my mouth and swallowed whatever it was that was coming out, which was nothing, during the fact that I had been eating—or if I did, I didn’t know what.
“Oh great—her again.” I rolled my eyes as I saw her in her long gown. She wore a bright blue dress that complemented her eyes and the most—accuracy? I’m Luna; I can come and go anywhere as I please, she said, looking back to one of the men standing outside who had probably tried to stop her.
“Paul, if you try that again I promise you would lose your head.” The man called Paul reeled back and stepped away before she closed the door entirely. She looked at me and suddenly her face split into the most spectacular and dazzling smile.
“Where did we stop in our last conversation?” she asked. Our old—my eyes. She wasn’t that…like she was just as remarkable as a poisonous frog with a beautiful mask.