Chapter 45
Chapter
Forty-Five
Alighter clicks.
I open my eyes, and Lachesis lights a cigarette in front of my face. “Shitty move, my friend.”
I blink, and blink again, trying to wipe away the fog in my brain.
It won’t go away. There’s a misty sort of quality to the world around me, and I didn’t really wake up just now as much as I sort of drifted to life.
I’m in a gray room, sitting on a flat, featureless bed.
It almost looks like a hospital but there are no beeping machines, no generic art on the walls, and I’m not in a paper gown. “Where am I?”
“You’re dead. I pulled your thread back to me.” She takes a drag on the cigarette and studies me. “Why’d you do it?”
“…die?”
She rolls her eyes and flicks the ashes of the cigarette into my lap. “No. Why didn’t you tell your buddy Kalos where you were headed? Do you know what a shitstorm you threw into my lap?”
I brush the ashes off my legs, idly noticing that I’m wearing a plain gray sheath, my feet bare. Nothing hurts, but nothing looks familiar, either. I raise my hand, staring at my fingers, and they’re translucent. “Am I a ghost?”
“You’re dead. Don’t change the subject. We’ve got a very pissed god over in Aos and everyone’s staring at me like it’s my fault.
” Lachesis has gray hollows under her eyes, and she looks tired.
I’m not sure if this is more of her “everyday working woman” motif or if that’s because of me.
Her clothes are wrinkled, and her brassy hair is pulled into a messy knot that highlights the dark roots at her hairline. “It’s been two months of pure hell.”
Oof. “Two months? I just woke up!”
“Time is different when you’re dead.” She tilts her head. “You didn’t tell Kalos you were returning to me as requested. Why?”
I suck on my lower lip, feeling ashamed.
“At first it didn’t seem important. By the time it was, there wasn’t a good time to bring it up.
I wasn’t thinking about dying, I was thinking about how to stay alive.
And then when I fell in love with him, I couldn’t bring it up.
I didn’t want to hurt him like that, to make him think I couldn’t wait to get away from him. ”
“Oh yeah, this is so much better.” She flicks her cigarette ashes at me again. “Good job.”
“I fucked up.”
“I’ll say.”
“How…how is he?”
Her eyes narrow and she gives me a withering stare. “You don’t get to ask that.”
I shrink back, wounded at her anger, and at the realization that I’ve hurt Kalos, badly. “I was hoping he’d forget about me. That he’d go home and realize I’m nobody and that I’m not important.”
She just glares at me. “You’re a really sad sack, Elsie Anderson.”
What?
“I realize you’ve got a few hang-ups due to what you’ve been through.
You mortals like to call it PTSD. I call it dealing with hard knocks.
I get that you’re used to devaluing yourself so you don’t inconvenience others, but at some point you do realize it’s bullshit, right?
That you’re allowed to be a person in your own right, with wants and needs? ”
I stare at her.
“Right, well, that argument is too late now, isn’t it?
” She takes another drag on her cigarette.
“Horse out of the barn and all that. Anyhow, thanks to you, our friend Kalos has entered a fugue state and refuses to come out of it. Aos now has a disease god who refuses to do his job at all. The population of that world is disgustingly healthy, and because of that, the influx of souls to the underworld has cratered.”
“You…make it sound as if that’s a bad thing?”
“Did you learn nothing at his side?” She finishes her cigarette and flicks the butt in my face. I bat it aside as she lights another. “Overcrowding in cities, food scarcity, those are just dandy and fun, aren’t they? Disease is all about balancing things out. Remember our conversation from before?”
“Clearing the forest for new growth,” I murmur. I remember.
“There’s no balance right now. The poor will continue to be ground underfoot by the rich because survival will get harder with more mouths to feed.
There won’t be enough land to grow food for all the people depending on it.
Because people are scrabbling for existence, there will be no renaissance, no great thinking, no progress of society.
Not until he breaks free of his own apathy, and that might take hundreds of years.
” Her lip curls. “I hope you’re proud of yourself. ”
“You’re blaming me? Because people aren’t dying?”
“Because you fucked a fragile ecosystem. There’s a difference between helping the lesser of four evils and fucking it over entirely.”
“I’m not that important—”
She snarls, cutting me off before I can finish.
“You could have prepared him. Had a hard conversation with him early. Now I’m pissed that I’m being made to look like the bad guy by sending you there.
I was doing a buddy a favor, and you blew this shit up in my face.
I tried to do you a solid, too.” She shakes her head, her new cigarette forgotten in her irritation.
Do me a solid…? I gasp, remembering my brother. “David! Oh my god. How is he? Can I see him?”
Lachesis’s unplucked brow goes up. “You want me to help you out now? When you’ve fucked me?”
I clasp my hands under my chin. “Please. Please please. I need to see him. To know this was all worth it.”
Her jaw juts in a mulish expression.
“Please? I’ll do what you like. I’ll go quietly to wherever you need me to go.” I beg her with my eyes. If I can’t have Kalos, at least I can have this small thing. “I just want to make sure he’s all right.”
“Ugh. I should have handed you off to Atropos and been done with it. Fine.” She puts her cigarette between her flattened lips and puts her hand out. “Come on.”
I touch her hand.
The moment we make contact, the world around me changes. Everything swirls, a thousand pale filaments appearing and disappearing, as if I’m passing through an enormous web. Sunlight pours in, and the webbing clears away to reveal…
A park.
It’s a pretty day, the grass green and fat clouds dotting the blue sky.
The trees gently sway in a breeze I can’t feel and nearby, someone is playing fetch with their dog.
At the edge of a path, a man in a baseball cap is bent over, cleaning a tiny bronze plaque on a park bench. He straightens, and my heart skips.
That’s my brother.
“David?” I step forward, releasing Lachesis’s hand.
“He can’t hear you,” she tells me. “This is for your benefit only. You don’t exist on the mortal plane any longer.”
I glance back at her and take another step toward my brother as he sits down on the bench and sets a single gerbera daisy on the empty seat next to him. My favorite.
“Hi again, Elsie,” my brother says, rubbing his thumb on the plaque. “Sorry I haven’t been out here much. It’s been busy.”
Stepping forward, I wave a hand in front of his face. He doesn’t notice but just keeps rubbing his thumb on the tiny bronze plaque on the bench. I lean in to read it.
Elsie Anderson. Last seen 2025. Missing but never forgotten. Always loved.
A memory bench. Didn’t we joke that if David passed, I’d get him a bench in a park so I could feed the pigeons in his honor?
I’m surprised he remembered. Maybe he didn’t get me a gravestone because I went missing and settled for this instead.
It feels more meaningful, and I ache with the thoughtfulness of it.
“I hope wherever you are, that you’re happy,” my brother says. “I hope you’re safe. I hope I get an answer someday as to what happened and why you disappeared.”
“He won’t,” Lachesis whispers unhelpfully.
I shoot her a dirty look, moving closer and studying David’s face.
He takes the cap off and closes his eyes, tilting his face towards the sun and he looks good.
His skin has color, and he’s put on weight.
His hair is thinning on top, but he’s got hair and eyebrows, which tells me he’s not on chemo.
It takes me a moment to realize he’s wearing dark blue scrubs, and there’s a badge at his hip.
A nurse? A doctor? Something medical, though, and my heart surges with joy for him.
I glance back at Lachesis. “How long has it been since I went missing? For him?”
“Five years.”
“Five years?!”
“Time moves differently in the mortal realm.” She shrugs. “Have you seen enough?”
“No,” I say quickly and sit down on the bench across from my brother. Leaning in, I study his face, memorizing small details. The stress line that lived between his brows is gone, his cheeks no longer hollow. He looks so good, I think fondly, watching as he folds his baseball cap in one hand.
Lachesis makes a frustrated sound and a moment later, I hear the flick of her lighter as she decides to have another cigarette.
I absorb these moments with my brother as he talks to the “bench,” updating it with everything going on in his life.
He’s been in remission for four years now—no evidence of disease.
An experimental clinical trial worked wonders for him, and he’s never felt better.
He’s taken up running. He won a stupid amount of money on a lottery ticket that he bought on a whim, and used it to pay off his medical debts.
He’s not vegan, but his wife is. He cheats and eats hamburgers when she’s out of the house, and they both chuckle about it when he gets caught.
The moment he mentions his wife, his demeanor changes.
He touches the ring on his finger, a soft smile on his face.
I see that ring and I’m both overwhelmed with joy for him…and envious.
So damn envious.
“I can’t help but feel that we traded off, somehow, Els,” my brother whispers to the bench.
“That you gave your life for mine in some way. That one of us had to die so the other could live. It’s crazy, I know, but that’s what it feels like.
And…I hate that I’m not sorry. I’m glad that I’m the one that gets to live. And I know that’s wrong.”
“It’s not wrong,” I tell him, even though he can’t hear me. “It was the deal I made.”
“But I’ve got such an amazing life now. You’d be amazed. My wife—”
A hand touches my arm. “Come on. We’ve got to get a move on,” Lachesis says. “He’s just going to vomit more of the same. Platitudes, misses you, loves his wife, yadda yadda. It’s the same shit every year he visits.”
I get to my feet, even as I protest. “I want to hear it—”
“And I want two firm D-cups that never sag.” She tilts her head, indicating we should leave. “But nobody ever gets everything they want. You’ve spent enough time here. You know he’s good now. We can move on.”
Nobody ever gets everything they want.
The words stick to my mind like static cling. They reverberate in my head over and over again. Nobody ever gets everything they want. Nobody ever gets everything they want.
I think of my brother, who’s well now. Has a wife and a child. Has everything I wanted for him.
Nobody ever gets everything they want.
I got what I wanted out of my deal with Lachesis, I’m realizing…and I’m also realizing it’s not enough.
I want more.
I want what my brother has with his wife.
I want that tenderness, that companionship, that forever.
I want Kalos. I want him to know he’s not alone, that I understand him.
I want him to know that if he’s too world-weary to do his job, I’ll pick up the slack.
I want to be his constant companion, because being here doesn’t feel like I’m home.
I can’t peacefully go on to the Afterlife.
I can’t relax, knowing that he’s been left alone without anyone that truly understands him.
I belong with Kalos.
I turn to the goddess. “I lied. I said I’d go quietly but I can’t. I need you to take me back to Kalos.”
She says nothing, just considers me. “Why?”
“Because he makes me happy and I want to be with him, even if I have to be dead. Even if he doesn’t want me there any longer, that’s okay. I just want to be in the vicinity. He said there’s a field where the faithful can wait for their god to come. I want to go wait for him.”
She puts up her hands. “I didn’t suggest that.”
I’m confused. “I…know you didn’t?”
“This isn’t me interfering,” she continues. “It has to be your idea. Not mine.”
“This is absolutely my idea. I made a mistake wanting to come back here. Can you please transfer me back to the other world? To Aos?”
“You’re positive this is what you want? I can’t change it after this. Once I send you there, my role with you is done. You’re no longer my territory.”
“Please send me to the Field of the Forgotten,” I say, and drop to my knees. “I’ll beg if I have to. Just please take me to him.”
“He’s currently in a fugue state, I’m told. It might be a while.”
I’m so relieved I start to cry. “I can wait,” I sob. “I’ll wait forever if that’s what it takes.”