Elysium's Love Triangle (21 page)

I find my diary in a cabinet by the bed.  I hope that whoever moved it didn’t read it.

I open it and a photograph drops out.  It’s the one Daniel took of us today.  I don’t know why but I suddenly feel like crying.    I promise myself that I will find him again.

“Hi,” A male voice says suddenly.

I get a fright at the
sudden sound.

I look towards it
, “What are you doing here?”

It’s Cairo Vale.

He quickly locks the door after him and throws the key out the window.

That isn’t a
nice
normal thing to do.

This is not good.

“What are you doing?”  I shriek.

He gives me a look of distain.

I am a lot
more
frightened now.

His words don’t give me much hope, “I am going to kill you, you evil beast.”

H
e produces a
knife from his left pocket.  His instructions are that I stand up, it doesn’t exactly sound like a request either.

I can’t help shaking now.  He is probably feeding on my fear.

I
find, however, that I
am not the only one who is scared.  I can see
,
in his head
,
that he is very afraid of me.  He thinks of me as a creature from the depths.

He is examining me
,
almost
as if
I’m
the one
who
going to attack
him
at any minute.   

He fully believes that I am Ethereal.  The problem is that his loyalty may not lie with me, as he professed.

He is holding the knife straight out in front o
f him, in case I
lunge at him
suddenly
.  He is
extremely
afraid.  If I am to survive I should probably play on this.

He tells me about his family,
while never taking his eyes off
of
me.  They are, in fact, good people.  They came here masquerading as ‘dirty worshippers-of-evil
.
’
They had a plan to convert the Cezers,
once they had gained their trust.  It didn’t take
his family
too long to figure out that this wasn’t going to work.
Evil is far too strong around here.

Then they heard that I was coming to make a personal visit.  They knew
,
from their own prophecies
,
that
I’d be a
teenage girl.
H
e hadn’t lied about that.  He’d been planning this day for months.

I am about to die in a fashion fit for the beastly creature I am.  Th
e knife he holds
is one
of the
few that has the power to kill me.  I’ll be screaming and on my way bac
k to the depths in a minute.  That
’s where I belong after all.

I listen and take it all in.  His words about me belonging in the depths upset me deeply in a way I can’t even explain.

Still, there’s something stopping him from hurting me.  There has to be some reason why he hasn’t got t
hat knife to my throat
yet.  It’s important that I figure it out.

Doubt.  I see it in his eyes; it’s there with the fear.  I must play on this.

I cry
. 

My
fake
whining would’ve amused me in a nicer situation, “Please stop, you’re scaring me.”

I sound so like a little girl.  It would convince anyone of my innocence.

He swallows and looks to the left.   He can’t look at me, he feels guilty.

The boy has not killed before.  He has mentioned his family a few times this evening.  His loyalty
is to them.  They are the people
spurring him on here.

I can use this.

“I have a family,” I sound absolutely heartbroken.
  “I’m not evil.”

Wow.  I am quite good at acting,
when threatened.  There are more tears coming from my eyes now, I’m not sure if they’re fake or real.   I just want to get out of here alive.

Still, there is a strange confidence within me.  It tells me that I can handle this situation.  I
have no idea where this confidence
is coming from.

Cairo comes
closer now.  He could be about to grab me.

I have a feeling that he won’t.  His eyes are looking sad now, not angry, that’s good. 

I take a deep breath, “I’m only sixteen.  Are you going to tell my Mom that you killed me?
  I’m not even Ethereal!  You’re making a mistake.
”

His response is soft, “You can pretend to be innocent all you want
, Ethereal
.  I know what you’re really like
, your
real
self.  You don’t reveal it to anyone
,
often
,
but you see little glimpses of it when you look closely.”

He still hasn’t grabbed me.  The knife is near enough now to be extremely distracting. 

The family thing isn’t working anymore.

Let’s keep on going with the innocence.

I have no idea how I feel so calm. 

I sound convincingly hysterical,
“Okay then, what’s my real self, huh?  When did I show my so called ‘evil’ at all, ever?  When did I show my ‘real’ self?”

He stuns me by answering straight away.  Today I showed it.  Only for a few seconds
,
but it was there. 
It was b
ack
when I promised a man that his mother would burn for years, before calling him a ‘sorry mortal’.

I’d forgotten I’d even said any of that
.  The words
just came tumbling out of my mouth because I was trying
to save Greg’s life
.  I tho
ught that the Cezers were going to kill my friend
. 

I was angry.  I remember that feeling now.

I am rather speechless.

Cairo looks satisfied.

He is on the verge of pushing me back
in
to that angry space.  The place where I, apparently, become more like myself.

Something inside me clicks.  Perhaps that is how it works.  An aggressive when threatened kind of thing.

I wish that Cairo would stop waving that
knife around. 

He should
really
stop waving that knife around.

He grabs me and places the knife at my neck.

The tears feel more real now.

Now I am scared,
angry
and
threatened
.  Well done Cairo Vale.

He speaks, “
Your
fear still tastes brilliant.  Any last words befo
re I slit your
neck
,
you beast of darkness?”

That wasn’t very nice.  Not very nice at all. 

I can feel the cool steel
of the knife against my skin.  I
t’s uncomfortable to breathe.  I
don’t really like this
.

Then I start laughing. 
It’s a
deep throaty laugh
. 
I’ve never heard myself
laugh like this
before.  It unnerves me
,
to a point
,
and I have no doubt
that
it completely jilts him.

I don’t feel scared all of a sud
den, “Cairo, put down that thing
before you hurt yourself.  There’s really no need for all this aggressi
on . . . I mean, can’t we all
just get along?”

He gives me a list of reasons why he, as a good person, can’t exactly get along with the likes of me.

I answer
, sounding confident, m
y voice has changed again.  “Ah, th
at’s a shame, and there was me liking you so much
.
. .
You know what else I like?”

He sounds curious, “What?”

My answer is ‘ice’. 

The knife turns to ice and begins to melt
.

“Just look at that, ain’t it pretty?”  I say smiling, even more relaxed now.

“Holy Shit!”  Cairo let
s go of me and stumbles backwards with surprise.

I turn quickly to look at him, “Not exactly.” 

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
 
I see why Cairo was so surprised. 

My eyes and hair have changed colour.  They are now
a deep
red.

Congratulations Cairo Vale, you’ve
done some really
great work here today.

Cairo spends ten minutes trying to calm me down. He is trying to convince me that I am not threatened in any way.

He keeps repeating it.  There is nothing dangerous here.  It is a nice, calming, place we are in. 

He has realised that threatening me, and angering me, was not a good idea.  

I do not think of myself as a monster.  I think of myself as Ethereal.  I am the better half of Katy’s soul.  She is weak.  I am strong.

  Cairo just triggered my emergence. 

I do
n’t think he is happy that he done so
.  He is trying to calm me so that Katy may come back.

I am making honey drop from the walls because it’s a nice idea I had.  It’s black honey.  I have no idea what it is
, truly
.  This room needs to be decorated with snakeskin also.  It will be so lovely then.

I need a new dog.  This world needs a new ruler.  There is so much to be done.

I want to hear some thunder.  It sounds and I smile.  It will be such a perfect world.  We need a lovely orchestra of thunder and rain right now.  The elements are my music.  I like the elements.

Cairo looks out the window and his eyes widen, “I promise I won’t hurt you . . . just please go back to being yourself.”

I can’t pay much attention to him.  He is too human.

I don’t believe that with great power comes great responsibility.  I believe that with great power comes the chance to get
more
great power.  It is up to the strong to seek it so that the weak don’t win out.

I look at the light-bulb. 
It glows too brightly, almost
like a dancing fire.

Fire.  That’s the thing that burnt my flesh for a thousand years.  A full thousand.

The underworld is a nasty place.  Zeus sent me there as a punishment for my crimes a few times. 

Hades works in the underworld.  I am very afraid of Hades.

The light-bulb bursts and we are left in darkness.

Cairo curses, the boy is so scared.  He was a good little worker for Zeus today.  He should be proud.

I begin singing lightly.  It’s a song about darkness.  The thunder seems to be providing the music for me.

In the underworld no man needs his eyes.  It is too dark to see anyway.

Cairo would not deal well with the underworld.  He is freaking out since it went slightly dark in here, I do not understand the boy.  Perhaps he wants his knife back, I do not know.

I make a flash of lightening happen just outside the room.  Perhaps the light will cheer him up.

It doesn’t.  As I said, I do not understand this boy.

I am too busy to fi
gure him out.  I must summon
Medusa at once.  Medusa is a nicely evil goddess who I’ve met a few times.  She and her snakes are never too busy to help me.  They always come remarkably quickly.  I heard once that she comes quickly because she is afraid of me.

I don’t understand why people are afraid of me. 

I am such a cool person when not burning in flames. 

I like the rain outside, all of the water just freely flowing. 

In the underworld they kept giving me milk to drink, instead of the water I asked for
.  This may not so
und like much but it drove
me fucking crazy.

I ordered water you slimy little corrupted witch goddess
,
I almost said.  Then I noticed
that
her skin was all burnt off and I didn’t say anything.

I never rebuked her for
the whole thousand years.

Every day I asked for water.