(once, long ago, there was an Empty Spaces Anthology . This was the longer of my two stories in it.)
There is a type of rot that breeds in silences, a moist decay that drips through the cracks in your life and softens your thoughts with its insidious warmth. It’s the sort of thing that lingers long after it was first welcomed in, that never quite leaves—
“Reincarnation Sickness”, as it’s known in popular culture, is actually two interrelated syndromes. From Lethe Toxicity comes the classic symptoms associated with difficulty forming new memories (forgetfulness, inability to form emotional bonds, difficulty learning new skills), while from the second and more controversial syndrome—so controversial, in fact, that its name is unsafe to write or speak—come symptoms related to the soul’s difficulties anchoring itself. Hallucinations, “wandering Ka” and “wandering Sa”, and the attraction of various metaphysical predators to the unprotected Sekhem.
The sun is dripping again, a cracked yolk running down the sky to pool along the crumbling horizon. Burning yellow mingles with chilly red clouds, and magenta steam bubbles up from the boiling ocean. It smells like burnt fish and salty rot, so I close my window and turn the air purifier up. Can’t risk getting vomit on the rug again.
I read on the news that this is normal. It’s part of a cycle. For the world to be renewed, first it must die, but only the parts that don’t matter. The unimportant parts. But the news said that I was in one of the important parts, a part that will become a seed to fill the new world with new life, so that’s probably okay.
Warning: Under no condition may any warform be exposed to Item 259 or its byproducts. If deployed against Empire’s enemies, all measures must be taken to prevent their warforms from being exposed. Other contamination must be contained and excised per standard protocol.
Precautions: Remade, Veiled, and Burnt individuals appear immune to Item 259’s influence, as are all awoken bearers of Empire’s bloodline. All other individuals are susceptible. Exposure may be prevented by combined hazardous material and hazardous information precautions, and treated by immediate1 soulburn and sterilization.
The history of Empire—there is only ever one, and only one who did not grow in the shadow cast by its death would claim not to know it—is fraught with danger. Even the most theoretical study of its contours risks stumbling upon an old taboo, a deadly truth wrapped in undying chains by ghoul-kings who feared the touch of sunlight upon their sins.
It is well known, to those of a certain disposition, that the ruins of the old watchtowers are attended still by the ghosts of the soldiers who gave their lives to the belief that a piece of land—a pile of rock—would protect their fellows from some distant enemy, uncaring of the internal foes that starved their supply lines and drained their spirits.
Every night your restless dreams lead you back there again, and every night the wound is renewed. It’s been decades since your body walked in that hallowed place, the labyrinth carved and filled; decades since your skin felt the dripping heat and your stomach clenched at the smell of the dead saints and the stars wheeled above.
Time should heal wounds. The therapists certainly think so; they think you’re unhealthily obsessed, unwilling to let go, unwilling to let yourself grow beyond the memory. They blame you. They don’t understand. Each night the memory is made anew, each night you are once again the things which were done to you and the things which you did—the things you were made to do, they’d say. A small rephrasing. A lie.