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I did not need to wonder or doubt when, overnight, the world had tumbled down.
It happened suddenly, it happened violently – and suddenly and violently it turned to me, that eerily familiar feeling: it reared its head, and hunted me like a bad omen.
Indeed, having lived as long as I have, you ought to come to terms with the fact that food shortages are doomed to happen from time to time – but just like back then, this was not a natural event. This was the doing of a monstrous woman turned into a wondrous monster.
A heart as beautiful as an oriental sword.
A heart as cold and ruthless as an oriental sword.
Honestly, these were not the circumstances in which I wanted to reunite with her. I envisioned that day to be one of celebrating and feasting, but there was hardly anything left for a cheap first entrée. Above all, I did not wish for our story to repeat itself. Such a place was not where I wanted to find her – there was no trail of piling, towering corpses on my path (only rising, neither dead nor alive creatures), and yet there I found her again, where the stench of rot and dried blood was thicker and filled the air. The woman who once agreed to be confined in a castle with a monster such as myself to avoid ending the world in her wake, in the end annihilated it with her own fangs and hands. As if it were her fate – as if it were the world’s fate to be ended by her.
As if it were my fate to stop it.
The apocalypse, annihilation of men and monsters alike.
A role so much unlike me.
Just because I did it once, it did not mean I would stop her again. I did not know whether I could do it in the first place. I might have been the Corpse King but she was the King of Oddities, and I was well-past my prime days. After all, I could barely sink my fangs in flesh that was not tender as hers, I could barely drink blood that was not as sweet as hers – she might have lifted her curse, but as a result it seemed like one had marked me instead. And so… I did not seek her out in order to fight, I did not look for her in order to persuade her, no.
Honestly –
I wanted to know what happened.
When I saw her, heart shattered and dress tattered, when I saw what looked like the vestiges of a too noble creature, sun-bitten, worn by time, and solitude – I cannot deny, nor I cannot hide, that my chest swelled with guilt. Regret gripped me where my own ugly heart was supposed to be. Wasn’t it my fault, a little bit? Perhaps I am the only one who still remembers her tale, but the princess lamented that beauty of hers beyond which nobody truly saw her. Once that veil had been shredded, isolation was replaced with annihilation, and thus she departed for her lonely journey. A journey that could have ended, had I not interfered. A journey that would have not killed Tropicalesque had I not been so stubborn and prideful. What if she accomplished her ideals? Was it worth these six hundred years she trod this earth?
Back then I could not understand her purpose, her aim: she said she could not kill herself, and yet she humoured me with my silly plan in the attempt to eat her. To kill her.
Now I think she just wanted to be eaten. Perhaps she would have felt content with sparing this monstrous existence, with sparing a creature she boldly called kind and beautiful.
Right –
“I thought you promised to become a tough vampire like me.” That’s the first thing I told her, that I reminded her. She told me those words before offering her bare neck to me, and I had believed her. “This isn’t really cool though, is it? I mean, who thought we would be having this conversation again.” We weren’t really having a conversation though, she didn’t even bother to look at me. She was sitting on the ground, engulfed in the sunset glow. I could tell, even if our master and servant relationship was so feeble you might even say it was non-existent, that she had let herself burn and burn and burn again till the sun sunk behind the horizon. First burdened with a heart that couldn’t accept to die, now hindered by a body that wouldn’t let her die. “You had also said suicide was not an option, but I guess six hundred years might change even a vampire’s mind –” Finally, at least she tossed a nasty glare at me. Those eyes of gold I gifted her, cold and austere, pierced through me with a clear intent to kill, and as I did not flinch, nor did I waver, she seemed to recognise me. As though she had forgotten, and I reminded her.
“Hmpf.”
She gave me her back again – my remodelling project worked way to well. I had created a true, thorough monster. I am taking full responsibility for this.
“Hey, princess – Kiss-shot. This hurts.” I was playing the nonchalant fool because I genuinely had no clue on how to approach this. As far as I knew, she could decide, right then and there, to kill me – which would be fine, really. This ending would be almost fitting. Hadn’t I told her, if we stayed around each other, we might have wanted to eventually eat each other? Maybe that was how it was supposed to be – for me to be devoured by her, for her to be, at last, devoured by me. As though she read my mind, Kiss-Shot spoke, and although I could not see her face, I could guess the devilish grin on her lips. “Hey, Suicide-master – hast thou come to finish what thou could’st not accomplish back then?” Well, I did not, not really, that was a thought that had just occurred to me, but she continued before I could even answer, “Thou art so late.”
Yeah.
I knew that.
And finally, I asked it.
“What happened?”
She stood up to face me, her skin stained with the blood of those failed creatures that were slowly, slowly crawling awake, her cheeks smeared with the blood of her own tears. As much as I wanted to know, I did not expect her to tell me, to gouge out her wounded heart and let it bleed for me – I did not expect it, and yet she answered me, she did so with a sneer. She, who had been forced to live disgraced and without a name, had at last found something – a form, a name, a raison d’être –, and foolishly (a fool, I have been such a fool, Kiss-Shot repeated it listlessly) she lost it again. Devoid of that something precious, the world had no reason to exist; without that something precious, she had no reason to live. However, she said, no matter how miserable, no matter how low she had fallen, she could not kill herself – and she looked at me, feverishly, frail: maybe you could kill me instead. It’d be fitting, she said; it’d be right, she insisted. I could sate my six hundred years old hunger. She went on and on, enticing me, seducing me, begging me – eat me, kill me –, her voice turned into a chant in my head.
Don’t make me laugh. “ I will not do it.” She fell silent; she looked disappointed, surprised. She had become a lot more expressive – now anger furrowed her eyebrows and subtly wrinkled her forehead’s skin. “ That was not the reason I came here: I did not come to fulfil an old craving of mine.” I came to see you – I came to see my friend . To see what it was that wounded you, that finally pierced and plunged in that impenetrable heart of yours. And, yes, I came to apologise… but I couldn’t bring myself to speak those words. “Ask me how I’ve been first, and maybe you’ll understand. I’ve grown pretty tired and old, too, you know?”
In the end, I laughed. I laughed bitterly, boisterously. I laughed to my heart’s content. “If I eat you here and now – admitting I could do that, admitting I still have a desire for that – I get to save the world, perhaps even you. But I couldn’t care less for such noble purposes. I am not like you.” And you are no longer you, too – I kept that remark to myself, but it was not out of silly sensitivity: she knew that. She must have known that. “If I eat you here and now – who will eat me when my day comes?”
You can understand, don’t you… wishing, demanding to die with dignity. I will not commit suicide. I would more likely fail like she did, despite becoming thinner and weaker. I am not called Suicide-Master for nothing. “Well, I’d rather it not happen right now, but were you to eat me, Kiss-Shot, you’d return to being human again. And you could die as one.” It was true I didn’t really felt like dying immediately, still I provoked her. I am not sure what I expected – she had become someone different from the princess I knew. I thought she would laugh at me, show me how she mastered the cool laughter I taught her and that she once diligently practised in her room; she could come and claim this existence of mine on the spot, allured with the perspective of dying herself.
She did neither of those things.
There was a sadness in her eyes that I had never seen back then.
Damn it… look at this mess. I wonder what Tropicalesque would say now. I bet he would shake his head, reverently and yet reprimandingly: I had told you, Suicide-Master.
“Leave.” That was all she said. The rumbling of a distant thunder drowned the moans and noises of those zombies that, finally, awoke. Quite anticlimactic, right? I hope nobody expected some sort of epic battle, nor that I would save the world. I am not on the humans’ side. I am only by my own side – and hers.
“I’m sorry.” That was the second time in a thousand years that I pronounced those words. I will never get used to them – but I meant them.
“Thou need’st not apologise.” She turned towards me one last time, a melancholic smile on her lips. “I was the one who asked thee. Thou hast already saved me once.”
Although I had been told to leave, she was the one who flew away.
Of course, I didn’t see her again.
It didn’t take long before the living overcame the dead, snapped awake from their death-like slumber; it didn’t take long before the world was restored the way it once was, snapped awake from a nightmare.
Of course, I couldn’t see her again.
I hope she didn’t merely die – I hope, at last, she found rest.
As for me… I need to be content with that melancholic smile. I only got to see that much, in the end.