Laudine's Absolution

Phantom of Petrus Landebert

Phantom of Petrus Landebert

Laudine was running.

From her thoughts. From the ghosts of the city. From the endless torrent of horror and dread and guilt that constantly threatened to devour her mind, heart, and soul.

She never stopped running.

She could never stop running.

But she could also never escape.

Her mind, her soul, was an echo chamber of screams that reverberated and grew in intensity with every passing moment. Some were hers, but others weren't. And those were the ones that truly scored the inside of her mind with their jagged claws.

There were moments of lucidity. Moments when she remembered where she was and that everything was wrong. But they were becoming fewer and further in between. There were times that she hated those moments, because they only served to remind her that the madness she was trapped within was unnatural and inescapable. At least when she was lost to the madness, she forgot who she was and that she was more than the mass of unruly emotions that ruled her now.

The haunted, stone city she dwelt within was empty. There had been people before. Nameless faces and wordless howls of horror that she could still feel trapped within her. She thought maybe she recognized them, in her memories, during those lucid moments, but knowing their faces was even worse than not knowing them, because it reminded her of all the things she had done to people she knew and respected a long, long time ago.

It seemed like an eternity. She was having trouble remembering a time before this stone prison that had captured her soul. She knew there was one, but she had lost the fragments of it while trapped in her madness.

Sometimes, rarely now, there were new faces. They came randomly. Night or day. Alone or in groups – small or large. None of them stayed. She got close to them, drawn to them, and their faces would transform into the horrified screams that, like the others, became trapped inside her soul and only served to steal what was left of her sanity.

It was fine. They should run. For what she wanted to do to them, they needed to run.

Laudine couldn't handle the weight of her madness any longer. The burden was too heavy to bear and, even if she was violently opposed to it during her rare moments of lucidity, when she was lost to the madness, she could only think about giving it away.

Shedding it. Unburdening herself. Pouring these emotions into someone, anyone, else. She never recognized their faces anyway. They didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the swirling eddy of fear, rejection, desperation, and that overwhelming, consuming guilt that built in her more with each scream she brought forth from another mouth.

But she couldn't stay away. Their emotions, they called to her. Determination and joy and loyalty and so many wonderful things she had forgotten how to feel. Warmer than the sun that caressed her face, softer than the water that sluiced across her skin. How could she resist?

Why should she resist?

They should suffer as she should. Why should they get to be happy or hopeful when she was trapped in this prison of her own mind?

Give it to them instead.

Make them drown with it.

Choke them with it.

They're screaming.

Make them stop screaming!

Why won't they stop screaming?!

And she would wake again, once more granted that brief, wonderful, sickening, temporary reprieve when she realized what she had done. Sometimes, the people would have run, trying to escape her and her presence. Other times, rather than survive under the same burden as her, they instead chose to take their own lives.