The End of Eden

XXXIV

I am nothing.

I am everything

I am no one.

I am everyone.

I am empty.

I am filled.

My body aches, from the crown of my head down to my little toes. My cheek stings, and my knees hurt so badly I can barely bend them, and I can't figure out why until the sunlight touches my skin and blankets me.

Cold chills racket my body as I push up from the hard stones cutting into my body. A layer of dew covers my skin, dampening me, causing my light nightgown to stick to my body. 

Oh no. No no no.

I'm in the courtyard.

The sun is rising lazily in the sky beyond, and even though my eyes are dry and scratchy, I force them to remain open.

It wasn't a dream.

"No..." I moan as I look to the pit full of black and gray ashes. I crawl over on my hands and knees, my hands scraping across the stones, my knees smarting from bruises. There's a fresh wave of tears seeping from my eyes as I slide down into the pit and kneel in the ashes.

"No, please," I cry, as I shove my hands into the ashes looking for any single piece of my Four that could be left behind. Instead, I only uncover hot embers and burn my skin. But I don't care. It barely registers in my tired, overwrought mind. It's nothing compared to what Four would have felt.

And I deserve just as much pain as he did, if not more.

The ashes of my lover, my favorite, the husband I truly wanted, coat my skin. He's all over my hands, my arms, stuffed under my fingernails, and filling the cuts on my knees. He's stained my nightgown, and a layer of him has settled into my hair and onto my skin. Each time I gasp for air as I cry and dig, my lungs and throat are coated in him.

They carved his face. They cut out his eyes and his tongue and they burned him alive because of me. Because I made him betray whatever oath he had taken to become a vessel of Sleep. Because I looked upon his bare face, and uttered his name. 

I'm digging and sifting and crying, when I hear her speak. I look to my side and see her, standing just inside the courtyard walls.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" She said harshly, her eyes roving over me as I look at her. "Have you lost your mind?"

"Leave me," I cry out, and Annabelle scoffs.

"Look at how the mighty have fallen," she retorts, and her lip curls as I sink deeper into the ashes, finding wood that hasn't finished burning, that's too hot to touch. But I grab it anyway to feel the pain. It's the least I deserve.

"Begone from me!" I scream, and I yank the smoldering wood out from the bottom of the ash pile and I hurl it in her direction. "Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth, you snake, or I'll cut it out myself."

She dodges the wood, and I turn away from her, not caring if she leaves, or stays behind to witness my downfall.

"You are in no state to do a single thing to me," she says, before I hear her feet slap the stones as she leaves.

I have yet to find anything, anything, of my Four, my love. No bone shard, no teeth, no clothing remnants. Only embers and burning wood that singe my skin when I touch it.

"What are you doing?"

The voice makes me stop short. I turn my head slowly, and I see him standing where Annabelle had found me a minute, or maybe an hour ago.

"You killed him," I whisper, and Two steps into the courtyard, his eyes running over me, his eyebrows furrowed under his mask. "You and One, and Three, and Sleep, you all carved into his face, and you burned him alive!"

I chuck another piece of burning wood, this time it flies wide, not even near where Two is edging closer to me, his hands up like he's trying to not frighten me.

"Who do you think we killed?" He askes quietly, and a maniacal smile breaks across my ash stained, tear streaked face.

"Who do you think?" I reply tartly. I see his eyes shift to behind me, and I feel another presence coming nearer. "Stay away from me. Let me find what's left of-"

My words are cut off when I feel hands grasp me under my arms, hoisting me from the pit of ashes. I shriek as I kick out my feet, but I'm so weak, from not sleeping well, from barely eating, and my stomach heaves inside of me.

Threes hands dig into me as Two catches one of my kicking feet, then the other and then his hands are pinning my ankles together. I cannot fight them. They are here to finish the job. I'm next on the funeral pyre.

"Easy, easy," they say, and very quickly, the energy I have dissipates, and I let them hold me as I start to sob again. Three hoists me over his shoulder after I stop fighting them, and I don't care where I go or where they take me, or that I will be the next to die this time.

But they only take me into my room, the door crashing open against the wall as they take me right into the bathroom, and set me into the empty tub. They don't want the ashes of Four staining the perfect room I have, and the tub can easily be cleaned of what's left of Four.

I wrap my arms up around me, and make myself as small as possible in the tub, leaving black streaks all over the white porcelain.

"Tell us what happened," Two murmurs gently, crouching down and reaching out to touch my elbow.

"It doesn't matter," I whisper. "He's dead. The dead can't come back again."

"Who is dead?" Three asks, his voice much more serious than I have ever heard it.

"Four," I whisper, and take a shaky breath. I fear I will cry again. "Just like every other Four before him."

In the long silence that follows, I know they look from me to one another. They are probably unsure of what to say to comfort me. I know they probably want to say that he broke some sacred vow, that he got what he deserved, and he reaped what he sowed, and ended up like every previous Four before him.

But Three only turns and leaves, and I watch from the corner of my slitted eyes as Two settles his knees to the ground.

"Why would Sleep have Four killed?" He asks quietly, and he reaches out a hand to touch my naked thigh, the black body paint of his hand blending in with the stain of ash on my skin. "We are his vessels, and though he will test us, he will not have us removed... unless we want to leave, and there is but one way out if that's the case."

I slide my eyes closed and the memory of what Sleep said to me floods my mind. Never disobey me again.

"He's punishing me," I whisper, and I hug my body closer. I feel Two's hand fall away from my leg. "He is jealous, and I also disobeyed him. And he killed Four because of it."

"I'm not dead though. I'm right here."

It's my imagination.

It's a conjuration of Sleep, meant to torment me until the end of my days.

I watched Four burn to nothing.

I only tuck my head away, and cry, my shoulders shaking with my sobs. There is a shuffle of shoes and clothes, as Two stands and steps away, and another replaces him. This one untucks my hands with his very real, very corporeal hands, and holds me delicately as he turns my fingers to press against the very real, very strong pulse in his wrist.

"I am right here, little bird. Can't you feel my heart?"