Witch Hunt

My shop is precisely as I left it. The boarded-up window makes it seem a condemned building from the outside, but thankfully no vagrants seemed to have ransacked it in the days left unattended. The pitiful pile of destroyed ceramic pot shards, spilled soil, and doomed flora still sullies the floor. Battle scars mar the interior in long and slender burns, and the lights are out. I sigh, taking in the musty air of my dwelling, and set my things down beside the counter.

Save, of course, for the Timekeeper. For that, I carefully pin the watch chain to the inside of my pants pocket, at least for the time being. Even now, I can feel it halting the churning of my stomach, freezing the roiling within. A permanent pause of the ills of my undead self... and perhaps even my mortal half. I'll never hunger again... I wonder if I even require water. Or sleep.

Vampires are oft said to be immortal; though I took a more roundabout path than the full-blooded bloodsuckers, it seems I've achieved the same. As long as the watch is near, I may just live forever.

Gods, I never even thought I would live to see 30.

Then again... it's not really living, is it? I'll exist forever. Maintain. Keep my course and drift ever on.

After the last month of disasters, that sounds just fine to me. If living looks like whatever Alabastra is doing, it's overrated anyways. Just an endless march of hurting yourself, hurting others. And what do you get for it? Undeath suits me better.

I march down the basement steps, collecting spare lightbulbs to replace what was broken. "We'll fix it. Together." The memory of Alabastra flashes through my head. Just one more broken vow. Not that I even needed her help. I certainly didn't want it.

Once the lights are replaced, after a shaky encounter with a step-stool, I pull out my notepad to begin a tally of that else needs fixing or replacing. As I look down, the latest entry in the journal stares back at me; it's still flipped to the Subduant recipe, from when the trio brewed their batch. Under the recipe, I catch the small etching of a smiley face in the corner, and a note in someone else's handwriting: 'youre welcome ~ f'.

I rip out the page, crumbling the note and throwing the wadded paper ball down the basement steps.

One thorough examination of my stocks later, and I've compiled a comprehensive list of repairs, chief among them the window. And beside each item, an estimated cost. When taken in full with my week of lost profits... I click open the register with a ding, pulling the cash within into my satchel. I'll need to visit the bank, assess how much in savings I have to work with to salvage this.

Perhaps some of those burn marks will have to stay, for a while. With any luck , the customers won't mind.

But the bank can wait until tomorrow. I've just gotten home, and there is plenty of time to spare. Hah. I suppose that's a paradigm I'll need to adjust to. There's time enough now for just about anything. In a semi-conscious gesture, I rub at the metal of the watch in my pocket. It's really over... On a less tiring day I'd castigate myself for the romanticism, but tonight, I cannot help but wax poetic. I've earned a moment of nostalgia... so rarely is it a positive emotion.

The upstairs is as dirty as I'd left it. Of course, that window also needs repairing. I pull out the notepad, adding it to the list. There's a low level of mess clung to my flat, born of visitors. Something deep within me rankles at that.

Piling dishes into the sink, wiping down the cabinets, my mind summons an image of Tegan in this space, huddled over my cookware. I snarl. Dammit, these reminders aren't helping. I slap the sides of my face. Perhaps I should call it an early night. The cataloguing ate through a significant enough portion of my day, anyways. And I do feel an emotional sort of exhaustion. Come to think of it, I've felt drained all day.

A thought crosses me, before I can sleep. I pull the watch out, looking it over. It cannot be separated from me. Even, perhaps especially, when I am at rest. Hmm... perhaps... Shuffling into my bedroom, the green gold pattern on the walls gawks back at me, the nearly elven ambience an irreplaceable reminder of the Bromley's fanciful tastes. The bedframe is cold and dark wrought iron, and the armoire and dresser are spartan and bare. Dark oak floors glint dully from the single yellow glow bulb. There is nothing... cozy here. It isn't supposed to be homey in the slightest. No one who's home this is lives here anymore. There may be no coffin, but I sleep in a tomb all the same.

Tucked into the closet, I retrieve a small jewelry box, forgotten in a corner and collecting dust. Most of the contents have been sold off, but there should still be something sufficient within. I turn the lid open, and the remnants of my mother's jewelry collection sit within like a treasure chest, shining silver and gold. My heart lingers on the trinkets a moment overlong, and I catch my stomach twisting itself into strange knots. An image flashes through my mind - her brown hair spinning in waves under candle light, as she draws a string of pearls down her wrist.

Reaching into the box, a chain of gold meets my exploratory hand. It is absent of a pendant or medallion, only interlocking links of metal. I spool it up, only to find it entangled with other chains and threads of cloth. Unraveling the mass, I pull free a black lace choker, half an inch thick, and something within me weakens. Some lizard brained part of me nearly wins out in the inexplicable desire to keep it... wear it. A quick flash of memory sears into my head - a more hopeful, honest little smile - and my breath hitches, composure collapsed. Dammit, this is why I don't come in here.

Then Alabastra's voice flits through my head. "Your giddy little smiles the other day..."

For Heaven's sake, I'm being ridiculous. My hand turns over to drop the strip of cloth back into the box, and I march to my office with the thread of gold. Carefully, ensuring it's never truly parted from me, I attach either end of the necklace to the watch chain, forming a long loop from which the timepiece can hang. I drape the artifact-emblemed necklace over my head, and tuck it beneath my shirt. The icy feeling of the metal on my bare skin elicits a small shiver, but I'm far more comfortable knowing it's close to the heart.

It is strange, going about my day, not a single hunger or wicked thought through my head. My mind is clear. I've spent so long pushing against the current, now I'm not sure if my arms know how to swim through these calmer waters. I almost quaff one of my remnant bottles of Subduant as I'm readying for bed, out of sheer habit. Obsolete now.

Instead I crawl under covers, unabated by sickened bloodthirst and blackouts, and rest. A quaint and boring turn of events. I've... succeeded. For the first time in weeks, sleep takes me under no amount of duress.

* * *

I was sixteen.

The tick-tocking of the clock on the wall echoed ever on in a droning melody, unbothered by the sights and sounds that unfurled below. Time is an impartial arbiter; not the judge, but judged upon.

Heavy, panicked breaths filled the air. Three sources, for three reasons. All in relation to the iron scent of blood that was seeping into the floorboards. A pool of crimson at my feet, that snaked back up through the grooves in the woodwork, to the body it was drawn from.

I'd never told them the specifics. They had to pry little truths from me, before and after that day, but never the full picture, the ungodsly totality. But they were not stupid. They put the pieces together themselves; the troubled teenager that they'd brought into their lives was a ravenous fiend. A monster. Belonging more to a crypt than the sanitorium they'd found him in, and certainly not a home.

Still they deluded themselves. Managed my condition as if I was sick. Perhaps I was. But the illusion was shattered eventually. This was the day that tide turned.

My mother... Delia Bromley. A halfling of middle age and bronze skin, flowing brown locks and the warmest eyes of the sun, in a summer green dress and comfy brown boots. Her usual sunhat lay discarded beside her. I was never sure how long she spent, exsanguinated and dying on the floor of her own home, turning paler by the minute. She hadn't managed to find a food source for me that week; we'd yet to establish the blood-trading relationship with St. Clayrin's Hospital. I was hungry. So, so hungry. A starving adolescent is a hellion for any parent... never mind when the only source to alleviate such pains lies within your very veins.

I couldn't recall how it happened. One moment, my hungers boiled over to burning, and the next, she was lying at my feet. Thank the Gods, Father arrived shortly thereafter. His scratchy brown beard burgeoned through his chin in alternating spots of gray, and those steely irises could cleave bone. Pravid Bromley rushed to his wife, tending her with the thoughtful care of a lifelong partner. He did not scream at me. He said nothing to me at all. Didn't even look me in the eyes. His only concern was her, and for good reason. He tended her back to health with the supplies in our shop; a healing hand to match his healing heart.

For all that wasn't said, I may as well have been a specter. An afterthought. It was only after Mother woke again that I was even acknowledged. I wished I hadn't been. Disappearing entirely would have been for the best.

"It's... it's not your fault, sweetheart", were her very first words upon waking.

Her husband and I found that equally objectionable. I was wicked, and he could see it. I wanted her to understand her mistake, to realize the danger she had visited upon herself, but even at the fever pitch, she still held on to that indefatigable hope. It made me want to believe her, too.

Father disagreed. "Don't assume he's innocent, Delia." He turned to me, confused, like he'd taken until now to work up the confidence to confront me. "How did this happen?"

"I... I don't..." The amnesiacs folly. Nobody ever believes the truth, if the truth brings them no closer to understanding. Perhaps I should have lied, attempted a story. But they deserved nothing less than honesty, spurious though it seemed. "I don't remember."

He stared a long while. When they'd first brought me here, he was as excited as she, optimistic toward a future with the disturbed child he'd hoped to solve. That hope was shattered now, synthesized with this moment into horrible, embittered truth. "Why would you do this? We invited you into our home, treated you like our own... This is how you repay us?"

"Pravid...", Mother cooed from the couch. "Don't..."

"Don't let him take advantage of you, dear!" His meek and nasally voice grew a hissing edge. "I apologize, Oscar, but you can't stay here. You need to leave."

Mother sat up, weak and woozy, hair shriveled into bunches from the couch static, but staring down her husband with coal-fired eyes. "Stop, Pravid. You're not sending my son anywhere."

"Your son?! Del, he tried to kill you! And he'll do it again! He's a..." And for the first time, I saw it in the eyes of someone I loved. Someone I trusted. Utter terror. It reflected back on me in horrible waves of guilt... "A monster."

She looked to me, warm and consoling, and for a moment I forgot again how doomed I was. "Go to your room, kiddo. Your father and I need to talk."

The muffled sounds of their argument devolved into a shouting match, despite Mother's weakened countenance. Whatever she had said to her life partner, he was gone the next morning. Guilt made for a poor replacement, for the father figure I'd squandered away.

* * *

Hands buried in my coat pockets, I stumble through Marble City streets, distracted and dodging self-inflicted scenes of clumsy stumbling, bumping into benches and posts, other pedestrians. My mind is elsewhere.

I can't stop thinking about that dream last night... I've never recalled a memory so vividly. Just when I no longer have need to delve my unconscious mind, the universe grants me the soporose insights I had been striving for. What had Faylie said... 'The universe loves drama'?

Groaning, I shake the faun out of my head. They don't get to keep haunting me like ghosts. I have enough undeath in my life.

Still, that memory... After working so hard to not think on that exact moment, itself just one of so many I'd rather not recall, now it spools out before me. I was so entirely helpless to stop the onslaught of echoed emotions... the wounds feel as fresh now as the day they were inflicted. It's as if I was there again, in that room with her, blood still on my lips. The guilt claws along my sternum.

A man walking the opposite direction mine nearly bumps into me. Or, perhaps I nearly bump into him, as he yells, "Watch it!"

I step to the side, pulling myself along a wall. I need a breather. That damned memory keep replaying over and over, skipping like a stuck record, my father's face the second he finally looks at me again and again and again. Perhaps a breather is a misnomer, as I seem to be forgetting how. The world starts to turn inward, and blood pounds in my ears. Gnawing shame demands I apologize, but to whom? I run a hand through my hair, gripping the locks to reign myself in. I must look pathetic, writhing on the street corner like some escaped loon.

Get ahold of yourself, I scream at the inner walls of my skull. I've battled otherworldly hungers for weeks; I can handle a sour memory. Perhaps I was too keen to believe I'd be without feelings to corral. After all, who even am I if not the ranch hand of intolerable emotion. I put up my usual dividers, penning the remembered ordeal into a corner of my mind, for it to tear into the meat of my brain with wanton degradation. As for the rest of me, I still have work to do.

Putting the crowd of agog eyes behind me, I pick up the pace. I didn't leave early this morning for nothing: the glazier's shop opens at the crack of dawn, and I'd like to ensure my order is placed before their backlog for the week fills. Repairing my shattered window is absolutely crucial; nobody wants to shop in a dilapidated wreck. And I can't start replanting until I can guarantee my plants sunlight.

As I maneuver through the crowds, transient rivers of people blending into nondescript blurs, I pass a paperboy hawking for the Marble City Acta. "EXTRA, EXTRA", he shouts, "NEW DETAILS ABOUT THE GUNFIGHT AT THE CARLIVAIN HOTEL!"

I freeze. Surely that isn't... I back up, returning to the barker. "How much?"

I don't make a habit of reading the news. Nothing but doomsaying and ill portents, and the squabbling of political factions vying for which way they might run Anily through with sword-sharp decline. I have enough pessimism in my life; and I certainly don't need the poisoned brand of optimism the other papers spin, either. In fact, I find it better to not keep appraised of the world around me at all. Under ideal circumstances, I'd know as little about the mortal condition as possible. Once I'm informed, I develop a terrible habit of caring. A waste of time I can't help but indulge. Willful ignorance is better than another angle from which to self-flagellate.

But my morbid curiosity demands an answer. "Just two coppers, mister!", the paperboy says, adjusting his flat cap. I hate myself for bristling. I'm twenty-five years old... how is it that mister still rankles me? Of course, the boy's not at fault. I toss him a dollar, out of some obligatory solidarity. I was never a news hawker myself, I didn't exactly have the approachable charisma for it. But his type was my type; a down on his luck urchin.

"You're just like me...", a specter of Alabastra echoes in my head.

I clutch my forehead, and only barely catch the boy's parting words, "Wow, thanks, mister!" I snatch up the paper and keep walking. A special addition, shorter in length, all about this gunfight. Punctuality be damned, I suppose, I find a bench and read the headline story next to an ad for shoe varnish.

BREAKING DETAILS ON CARLIVAIN HOTEL SHOOTOUT
The shocking conflagration that had occurred last Zursday the night of the 26th has been met with quite some bewilderment to the people and the police. The incident, which lasted for some few minutes late into the evening, involved a fire on the 15th floor, that had been thankfully extinguished, a rogue Clockwatch gone haywire, and a seized lever action rifle, found broken and promptly turned over the Bureau for Firearm Disposal. All-in-all, the hostilities left

My hands crinkle the sides of the newspaper in a vice grip, and I have to stop reading for a moment, torrents of guilt whipping up a storm. When I've finished white-knuckling the rag, I pull the paper taut and continue.

All-in-all, the hostilities left twenty-three men and women deceased. The police have yet to release the names of the departed, but have confirmed that all identified dead are suspected of having ties to the infamous Cozzo family of crime. The nature of said business has thrown into question the cause of the conflict, and the precise goings-on at the Carlivain Hotel. Most distressingly of all, however, are the eye-witness reports of a wielder of blood and shadow magic, suspected by monster-hunting expert liaisons to be of an undead nature, seen rampaging at the scene. Furthermore, there are those claiming that individuals of a Fae persuasion were seen in the scuffle as well. This reporter will refrain from speculation, but many have begun to murmur unpleasant possibilities... are monsters once more invading our city? Many Anillians today are left feeling the scars of the Runeplague anew.

I ball up the paper in a wad of ink and white, and toss the rag into the city street. Suddenly I'm reminded exactly why I stopped reading our city's paper of record. Well, that and the inundation of advertising. And the decline in writing quality... in fact, I'm replete with reasons. And I suppose now I can add 'avoiding reminders of one of the worst nights of my life' to that list.

The rest of the day's business still awaits me. Hopefully the glazier's understanding of my sudden interest in current events. Even if no one can know that I am the current event. I groan. Not anymore, at least. I continue my walk.

* * *

I had never imagined the extent to which I would hate funerals.

An exercise in morose navel-gazing for the distant relatives and casual acquaintances of the deceased. Crying after the absence of someone that they only barely knew. And for the ones who had a deeper mourning to do, serving only as a sick reminder of the work already done, grief expected to be drudged out and wound backwards for the crowd. Expected to play-act the part of Bereaved Relative when there was real loss to wrestle with.

It all felt like a grand farce. A mutual lie, a mass hallucination, to give some kind of meaning to the passage of life to death, to join hands and pretend there is rhyme or reason to the random misfires of life's cruel slings. To most in attendance, she was just another reminder of the fragilities of their own existences. A self-serving spot of inspiration to spit platitudes into each other's faces, to 'live life to the fullest' or 'seize the day'... exercises in their own myopic attempts at profundity.

The platitudes didn't make it better. They didn't bring her back. The amusing stories and weeping former friends made for so poor an effigy in the shape of the person who was no longer there, it started to feel more like mockery. I wanted desperately to leave, to storm out. To burn the building down, with everyone inside. Instead I sat there as Father Kansis read the final rites for the dead. I refused to play the part assigned to me and cry in front of the charlatans. My memories of her weren't for them.

They were hardly even for me.

The dreamlike ceremony passed without fanfare, and a handful of us were gathered into a small room off the side of the main temple hall. Father Kansis sat behind a desk, small glasses at the tip of his bulbous nose, as he unsealed a document. Beside him, a wiry man in a plain black suit I had never seen before or since stood statue still. He had introduced himself as a lawyer. Kansis said, "As per request of th' departed, I'll be reading th' will, but Mr. Componi is here ta ensure all is up to legal standard."

The assembled mourners shuffled in place, eagerly awaiting their prize for having pretended to care for so long. Kansis unfurled the post-mortem letter and read, "To my sister Lara. I leave th' locket ya gifted me on my twenty-first birthday, and nothin' more. Hopefully th' memories of such a thing will suffice."

A halfling woman beside me huffed, clearly disappointed in her lot. She looked for a moment like she might start an argument, before she thought better of making a scene.

"To my estranged husband, Pravid. I leave a portion of my savings equal to 15% of my assets, as well as a collection of items still in my possession that by rights belong to him, as follows..." As Kansis listed off various bits and pieces of kitsch, all other eyes in the room drifted to the empty seat where my adopted father should have been sitting. At the time, we thought he just couldn't show his face. We didn't learn until later that week why he never attended that funeral.

Dead men don't collect.

"To my son, Oscar Bromley." I shifted uncomfortably. In life she knew I hated that name, but there could be no room for interpretation in legal settings. "I leave th' vast majority of my savings and assets, equivalent to 75% of all of my banked earnings and valuables greater than 25 dollars."

The glassy stares of the halfling family members of the departed carried so much hatred in my direction. I'd wondered if they smelled the guilt on me... or if they simply hated me for more arbitrary, mundane reasons. I wanted to believe it was the first. That their animosity had a righteous purpose. The banality of the casual cruelty to hate an adopted child simply for perceived undeserved inheritance just seemed too mundane and tediously nasty to be true.

"As well as", Kansis continued, "The property of 492 West Mayflower Drive, and the stewardship of my apothecary shop, to be overseen upon completion of his training at the Lazuli Institute."

I'd always wondered if that had been her plan from the start. Why she insisted that I take Alchemy lessons when I'd enrolled just a few months prior, on my 18th birthday. I could only assume that was the case. She'd spent a great deal of time sick. More than time enough to come to this decision.

It was the least I could do, to fulfill her wish. This was, ultimately, my fault after all.

The reading continued on with few others receiving much at all. Some didn't even wait until they were out the door to spew their catty complaints to one another. They would get to go about their days, to let the woman they had ostensibly shed so many tears for be left as a distant memory.

Where did that leave me?

* * *

Another vivid dream. I've only ever half-remembered that day... deliberately so. But now my sleeping mind insists on replaying the memory in agonizing detail. I wanted to refrain from casting blame yesterday, but... there's only one culprit I can conjure.

My hand wraps around the cold metal laying on my chest as I sit up in bed. It seems I've traded one kind of nightmare for another. The red and bloodied sort were almost preferable. But even still, it is a miniscule price to pay to relive my least favorite memories, if it means I'll remain in control of myself. No cure is without its side effects, after all. I can think of worse for a time-bending artifact to inflict; and any are preferable to the condition it is medicating. This is simply the new normal, so it's best I become accustomed. At least there are only so many horrible memories of mine with which to be tortured.

I scratch at my chin. The prickly beginnings of beard growth draw out a groan. I'll have to rid myself of - those little winces and signs that scream you're not sittin' right - ... Or... perhaps I'll keep it.

I've never grown out a beard before, after all. It's always felt like an unnatural fit. Like so much of masculinity, come to think of it... but, perhaps that's only a consequence of my undead nature. Just one in a sea of ways I can't relate to the human condition. Yes, obviously, that must be it; whatever the half-elf thinks she saw in me, that's a far more likely explanation. I've always had to try harder than everyone else to understand the things they seem to grasp innately, why would being a man be any different? Of course it's not supposed to feel right... nothing else does.

But if I'm to live forever, perhaps it's time I started trying harder at it.

I pull myself out of bed. Still a strange occurrence, to feel so... normal, after so many brushes with death. I assume I will eventually settle into a routine once more, but I can't help but scrub that all-too familiar 'someone is watching me' paranoia from my mind. I make myself a cup of coffee... out of habit, really. I don't feel particularly exhausted, physically. Even sleep feels procedural instead of necessary. I could likely forgo rest entirely... though, I'm not particularly interested in what lack of sleep will do to my mind. Then again, if I'm to be continually bombarded with such unpleasant memories, I suppose I'm not above it.

BANG BANG BANG

Knocking on my door... at this early hour, with my shop so clearly in a state of disarray. I roll my eyes, groaning. If that's who I think it is... I march downstairs, but don't see a soul through the door window. I didn't imagine that, did I? I begin to walk back up the steps-

BANG BANG BANG

"We're closed!", I wheel around and yell to the knocking. Perhaps it's someone of a shorter stature... or they're tucked around the corner. Either way, the apothecary is still in no condition to resume operations. The window won't be repaired for another week, the herbs still need regrowing, never mind my exhausted supply of flasks-

BANG BANG BANG

Oh, for the love of the Gods... Some people just don't take a hint. I walk to the front door and throw it wide. "I said we're clo-"

A small figure in a purple suit looks up at me, long beard scraping across the ground, beady red eyes, and a jutting nose. A... redcap...? Before I have time to ask him what he thinks he's doing, he produces a cotton-like flower from his suit pocket, and a cloud of spores releases from the carnation. The annoying familiar feeling sends enough anger through me that I almost resist though sheer rage.

A soporific. Gods dammit, is the last thing I think before I'm out like a light.