I am Bexley The Bloodletter’s Scourge

Chapter one: The Ultra-mutated zombie’s scattered memory

 ——

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own. I knew it was that horrible witch who disfigured my reflection in such a distorted way. It was like a dream.

“Oh God, hang on, Indigo!” I cried out in a scream, my nails digging into her forearms as I desperately dragged and weakly pulled her up from the mountain. “Don’t let go! Do-don’t let go!”

“Amory! I c-can’t!” She was terrified, her gray eyes wide with fear. Rocks had matted her silver hair covering it. Her hands, sweaty, slipped out of mine.

An old, lost nightmare.

 We talked as if we were human, though we looked like the mutant zombies we always thought we were. Slimy, rotting, our nails like claws and teeth mashed together like mushy peas. A layered piece of memory that is tattered and shorn keeps reaching me, a static piece of something forgotten or forged. We look human at one moment, then Bloodletter, in another. I knew somewhere deep inside of me that I was not human, but it felt so real. The mutant feeling that made me feel like my true self was hiding underneath a layered veil. Not quite a zombie, but a monster. We were always monsters, weren’t we? I can’t remember.

A mixture of zombie, beast, adding in a splash of mutant poison and madness.

“I didn’t betray you! That witchy woman in the cave,” I tried to lunge forward to get a better hold of her, pulling her up at a painfully dead-weight pace. “She beguiled and tricked me!”

“I know! I know! I know it was for your-!” she sobbed without tears, not finishing the thought. I finally lift her up as she falls on top of me, both of us breathing erratically. As Bloodletters, we didn’t have any air inside our lungs. The strange sensation of allowing our lungs to take in a deep breath and exhale, only to repeat, was wholly dysphoric. We were outcasts from the regular zombies and humans. No one wanted anything to do with us in polite zombie society, even as we were made with the zombies in mind.

I sensed she had something to say. The word “family” hits the tip of my tongue.

“Indigo, ya are my family…” I muttered with as much confidence as I could after a long silence. She looks at me, exhausted and pained, but attempts to smile. I see her scratch her little button nose, making me worry that a fight between the two of us is about to ensue.

The smile breaks as she moves away from me slowly, gently pushing me off of her. My heart feels shattered by her sudden response, and I feel my tears leaking out. Tears? That means… human.

My heart is full of violent palpitations as we continue to talk like normal people.

“I-Indigo?” I asked in a shaky voice.

“What? What do ya want from me, to forget my senses?! To not trust what I see and hear right in front of me, so? Is that what ya want?” She stood up in a stumbling manner. Before I try to help her not fall, she glared at me, making me pause.

“What about just now? You trust what happened right in front of yer eyes just now?” I argued with a fretful sob.

“You saved me so you can save your own hide, is what it is, Amory. You couldn’t come back without me and not be under amhrasach, you fool.” She brushed off her hair and clothes in a swift, curt, angry motion, huffing and puffing as she does it. The same way she always does it, since we were kids. My very best friend. Now, I think I lost her. 

“I’ve seen you give a sharp rock to kiss your mother for a loaf of brown bread,” she scowled while narrowing her deep gray eyes at me with an intense fury. I had never seen such an intensity in her before. My heart lurched in my chest.

The sun hits her pale features in such a way that she almost looks like a sun. Gleaming and beautiful, even in her fury. She warned me of this mountain. I feel a restless quaking as the strange accents that seemed alien and unfamiliar are now familiar and very natural.

This mountain with the cave has a legend to it. Anyone who went near it too long went mad or came back to town and was never the same. Of course, I was fool enough to come up here and try to get my fortune. Even worse, Indigo had heard whispers of my venture and followed me close behind, though I did not know she was following me.

“Now, look, Indigo, I realize you’re upset with me. I understand. I realized that the encounter with the witch in the cave looked awful. But it wasn’t as it was, I swear. I wouldn’t ever hurt you.” I sighed as I walked toward her, but she shuffled back in a flurry. “We’ve always been down in the dirt, poor.” I sighed. Indigo nodded humbly while the memories of a family I once had flooded my mind, and it hits in waves like a terribly deep river. It was overwhelming.

“You took me in when my family moved from Finland. Y’know, I wasn’t born into a family of elitist connection. Without my scion relations, I was not born for anything better than the empty bottom of a scallop.”

I tried to laugh, but her expression was so harsh I can’t bring myself to fake it. “No fortune waiting for us loafers. And yes, I’ve lied and cheated to get my bread before. But this… this wasn’t true, by God.”

Indigo sighed in frustration. Her direct but serious, wide-eyed look gave me chills. “I know. I know. I am tryin’ ta understand this. But you are… I don’t even recognize you anymore. You aren’t you,” she almost cried, but it comes out like a frustrated and sad laugh.

I scratched my hair, which felt funnily itchy like my face, but I just shook my head at her. “I’m still me, Indigo. I ain’t no Phoenix a’rising from the misty moors...” I tried to say in a lighter tone, but she looked horrified.

“I’d rightly prefer that over this, so. You’re changing by the second…don’t ya see?” She cried. I felt fainted and ready to keel over.

“I swear, I didn’t make a deal with that witch. Not against you. Never against you. She put a shrouded spell over our conversation and switched our words with lies.” My voice sounded muffled as I barely even could see her eyes anymore, as it seems like it is getting darker and darker. My hair keeps moving over my face.

“You agreed to give her my life so you can be rich, Amory. I heard it.”

I heard it in her voice, the pain and sadness of betrayal. The sound hurt me so much. The heartbroken, defeated voice that came from her tore me up inside.

“No, Indigo, I wouldn’t. What I said was, I’d give her my life if she gave me a fortune. She said she’d take it little by little, but that I could enjoy it for a long time, in solitude.”

She suddenly was at my side, holding me, when I felt a sharp stinging pang in my mouth, and the taste of metal and bitterness like blood. I felt my teeth crumbling and something forming. It felt like a hound’s tooth.

“Oh, Amory, the way she worded it, why’d ya agree?” She sobbed into my chest as I felt itchier and more uncomfortable, but I let her come close even as I felt like fainting. “You remember all those fairy tales we heard as kids, those dumb genie tales and how wishes needed to be worded more carefully? And how genies and witches and magic was-”

I took her dainty hand in mine, but I can’t feel it. I feel like I’m wearing thick gloves, but I squeeze her hand, and see her tear-drop eyes widening a bit in a strange mixture of sadness and shyness.

“I wanted to give you some security. And my family. My sister. I wanted to make an impact,” I laugh hysterically, crying even as the bones crunch and break and reform inside of me. The muscles and organs push against each other, putting pressure on my entire body and lungs. I can barely stand, much less breathe.

“Why me? Why me, Amory?” she cried to me as she moved my thick, brown hair out of my face. I said softly, “Because you’re my family, and I love you, you dummy.”

“I’m sorry I fell off the mountain, like a dumb billy goat,” she said with a sad laugh.

“You looked so fecking frantic, running so fast you didn’t see the edge? Whoop!” I teased her as she laughed genuinely.

“Oh, Indigo. This is goodbye, then.”

I nodded, seeing her look of shyness and affection turn into a soft sort of terror. I did not link the terror to trust. At least, I knew she trusted me still. That was all that mattered.

“I’ve loved you, too, dumbie, if you didn’t know, you foolish imp,” she scowled quietly, wavering with a sad wave, tears running down her face as she goes down the mountain, leaving me alone.

Going to the cave, I see it is now full of gold, silver, diamonds, and luscious rubies. All my fortune is here. To mine and keep and cherish. To live forever.

There’s a long, filmy piece of shiny metal, and I saw myself in it.

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own, and I knew it was that witch who disfigured my reflection in such a strange and distorted way.

All the time in the world on top of a magic mountain, with all the fortune, being taken piece by piece slowly by an unseen witch.

I was the werewolf of my making; I realized painfully.

And now I was heartbroken to lose my heart, my love, my life.

Suddenly, a loud crash reaches my ears, and the mirror shattered.

“HURRY, AMORY!” I saw Indigo’s fists cut up with no blood as she grabbed my hand.

In the shadows, the strange fruity elixir spilled on the dark ground, and it sloshed against my feet as we run. The witch can’t ruin any more lives now. The mixture must’ve gotten mixed up, and the witch drank the wrong one. I see her burning from the inside out, smoke rising from her gullet as we ran. The illusion she set up vanished as soon as Indigo smashed into the mirror. No longer “human,” and I felt our past or altered memories were fading once again. We were Bloodletters. Despised and hated by all. Anything we once were or had been now erased and stripped like the dead skin of a snake.

The runners of the night. At least I had My Moon with me. My Mirror without lies.