Jonathon Worthington: Strangelight Investigator

Case #18: The Mystery of the Purloined Past (Chapter 11)

Aria smiled evilly as the horrific realization crept across my face.

"Yes, my love," she hissed, sliding closer, pulling down my numb arm so that the pistol was no longer pointed at my head. The smell of overripe fruit, sweet and corrupt, underlain with the coppery tang of blood, assaulted my nose. No one on the docks moved; we were all entranced by her fearful beauty. "That's right. Abandon him, let the false weakling go. Come back to me, my beloved Deadeye. Return."

I felt the memories of another life, an existence whose recollections had merely leaked through so far, threatening to burst the dam inside my mind. Despair gripped my heart as reality faded from sight. I was being drawn deep into my own thoughts, a tumultuous sea of conflicting ideas and emotions. Who was I to fight the rightful owner of this mind, the rightful heir to my flesh and soul? Aria whispered encouragement to the other man that dwelt slumbering within, drawing him out, tantalizing him with her terrible beauty and promises of sins yet to come. How could I possibly withstand the pressure of my own mind, my real one, trying to reassert itself? I didn't want to become that man again, this brigand I'd heard so much about, whose memories I'd seen in fractured light. But that was not my choice; it was his, or more properly, it was my true self's decision. I gritted my teeth and prepared for who I was, the essence of Jonathon Worthington, to be swept away like debris savaged by the flood.

Yet a moment later I still remained.

Deep within my mind I could feel the dam groaning under the strain of the memories behind it. But while I was not strong enough to stop the destruction of myself, there existed another man within me who fought it, snarled as he held back himself with the power of a will far stronger and more terrible than I could fathom.

Captain Jon Elliot, known to his enemies as 'the Deadeye.'

To say that the twinning effect was disorienting would be describing the ocean as slightly damp. I knew he was me, I was he, but it felt as if two different men met before the barricade in my mind. I could almost see him, scarred with the markings of his clan, scarred in his very soul by the deeds he'd done, a look of pained anguish on his-my face as he stood firm against the trembling supports that protected my tenuous existence as Jonathon Worthington. With a flash of insight I understood something clearly, as if he'd spoken directly to me.

Captain Deadeye was refusing to return.

His life had been one of the darkest desires and fulfillment, a series of exploits in carnality and bloodshed that would make both a dockside madam and an iron lich shudder in paired revulsion and envy. But while Toruk's blight and his own deeds had pushed him farther into the shadow there'd still been a deeply buried spark within his breast, a painful regret that flared with each crime against nature and humanity. Captain Elliot had been a man of hidden desires, looking for a way out, a way to forget who he was and start anew in the world.

Aria laughed softly in my face as she watched the boundaries between my personalities crack, and her countenance expanded to encompass my inner world as she pressed herself against me in the real one. Through the Deadeye's eyes I witnessed terror and lust experienced side by side, beauty tainted with the darkest of evil, as together she and the captain exulted in bloodshed and a twisted form of love. Despite the hatred of men all Satyxis were bred with, despite the fact they killed their own sickly sons rather than allow them to taint the matriarchal bloodlines, a surprising development forced Aria's hand when it came time to pick a sacrifice for an ancient ritual.

She was in love with Captain Elliot.

It was not to me that Aria whispered the words 'my love,' no; she called to the deeper, darker portion of my soul that the rituals had subdued. Aria was as conflicted as I, two parts of her fighting about whether the Deadeye should live or die. There was only one thing the two disparate parts of her psychopathic split could agree on. Whether it was to save or sacrifice Captain Elliot, first he had to be freed of the alien personality that had supplanted him.