Kitabı oku: «Kill me with your love. Part I»
© Iggy Joutsen, 2024
ISBN 978-5-0064-7321-8 (т. 1)
ISBN 978-5-0064-7322-5
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
Iggy Joutsen
Love Me To Death
(fantasy)
I dedicate this piece of work to my dear friend Nick Trapp (Great Britain), who became my first reader, and two friends from Lithuania, Goda Juškėnienė and Janina Leskinien (Janina Lesnickiene), thanks to whom I have fallen in love with the country of action of the events of this work.
Contents
Part I Emilius
1. Special
2. Ema
3. Secret
4. New I
5. Mentor
6. History Lesson
7. Surprise
8. My Nature
9. Initiation
10. The Council and the Beginning
11. New Mystery
12. Unsolved Problem
13. Talking to myself
14. Not An Easy Replacement
15. Austeia
16. Spells
17. Summon
18. Fate
19. First Victim
20. Angel’s Death
21. One Step Closer to Reveal the Mystery
22. Unpleasant Confession
23. Kayus
24. Fatal Mistake
25. Rite
26. Dominikas
27. There is no Way back
28. Cruel Choice
29. In Search of the Truth
30. Lost in Memories of the Past
31. Third Seizure
32. Second Victim
33. Third Victim
34. Too Long and Difficult Day
35. Lessons from the Past
36. Farewell Speech
37. Deception
38. Old New Friend
39. There is no End to Evil
Part II Sophia
1. Special
2. Farewell
3. A Guest from the Past
4. The List
5. Who is the Traitor
6. Omens
7. In Search
8. Talking with The Book
9. Labyrinth of the Past
10. The First Attack and the First Suspicion
11. Not Easy Confession
12. Secret Society, or Conspiracy
13. A Serious Talk
14. Farewell, My Dear Friend
15. The First Suspicion
16. A Strange Dream
17. Anticouncil
18. New Acquaintance
19. Traveling back in Time
20. Three Men
21. Attacks
22. Mistake or Right Choice?
23. At Least One Secret Has Been Solved
24. The Unexpected Help
25. There is no End to Evil
1. Special
When they have been keeping saying all the time since your childhood that you are special, you unconsciously begin to believe it. Such remarks are especially characteristic of loving parents who tell their beloved offspring. Of course, one’s own child will always be unique. No wonder they say that love is blind.
As for me, everything was “even worse.” I was considered special even when I did not do anything outstanding. I had been praised, cherished and idolized since the moment I was born into this world. Day and night, I heard words of support and approval.
If something did not work out or went out of hand, they kept repeating to me: “You can do it, just give it a try. You’re smart and resourceful, and you’ll always find a way.”
I was so inspired by that kind of “super-support” of my parents, who really made me believe that everything was in control. Of course, later life taught “my Majesty” many instructive lessons. I realized that no one needed me in the world; that most people did not care about me and I was not special at all, but quite an ordinary person with own failings.
Who would have thought that many years later, when I had long ago come to terms with the essence of an ordinary person, an unexpected ability woke up in me.
I was devoured by curiosity, but they said “everything in good time.” Life went on as usual, but the secret would never be revealed to me. “Probably they lied to me. There is no “family secret at all”, I thought, until I completely forgot about it. The mystery unfolded by itself one rainy June evening.
As always, on Friday, my friends and I got together to play Mafia in one of the cafes of Kaunas. I really liked this game because of its fun and unpredictability. In it, as in life, you never know who is hiding behind the mask of indifference.
My friends were quite ordinary people, all with college degrees and decent jobs. It is nice to spend time with them and talk on a variety of subjects, but this is not about that, but about the game.
Everything was going smoothly, fun and at ease. We were laughing a lot, drinking alcohol and exchanging jokes, sometimes obscene ones. Suddenly, after another joke, I accidentally showed my card and did not even notice it, which resulted in my merciless “murder”.
Of course, I considered what happened to be an injustice and got terribly upset. I got so angry that, jumping up from the table, exclaimed “May the thunder strike someone on the head!”
I did not know why I shouted out this particular phrase, which had no meaning, but immediately after that, the thunder really struck and with such a noise, that glass flew out of windows all over the neighborhood, and the lights instantly went out. Frightened shouts were heard from everywhere and when, sometime later, the power was on, we got shocked by a scene before our very eyes.
In the corner at the entrance to the café, a man was lying with a smashed skull, from which a grayish liquid was flowing out, as if someone had hit him hard on the head with a heavy object.
2. Ema
A few days later, I was walking down the streets, immersed in thoughts, and did not notice anyone or anything around. Something told me: that incident in the café was not an accident nor a coincidence, as it might seem at first glance. It was all my fault, although it did not look like that at all.
Despite my unstable inner state, I felt fine physically. Some unknown force was spreading through the body like a burning stream. I felt it with every cell of my being. The effect of that force did not bring a relaxing effect, but, on the contrary, drove to an even more anxious feeling.
Mental throwing did not give me peace. I felt like a wild animal trapped in a cage and did not know what to do and how to accept a new “essence” in a new inner “appearance”. There was no doubt that I had been changing. We always accept any changes in ourselves last of all: only after everyone who knows us recognizes them. My friends realized it, and it took them a moment.
Emilius! Emilius! Emilius! How could this even have happen? Was that the secret, which my parents had been mentioning all my childhood? Something in me was evolving and evolving at a terrifying speed that could not be stopped and reversed. But I didn’t need any changes. They might spoil everything: the usual routine of life, everyday habits…
“Emilius! Emilius! Wait a minute!” A familiar female voice forcefully broke into the swarm of thoughts that drowned out all the sounds from the outside world, and “woke” me up. I turned around and saw Ema (one of my best friends) coming toward me at a fast pace, almost running.
She was out of breath; it was clear that in an attempt to catch up with me she had been running for some time. Her long fiery red hair fluttered in the strong wind, and her open cloak, like wings behind her back, gave the appearance of an angel descending from Heaven to Earth. Seeing this fragile girl, anyone could think of her being ideal: her figure, face, character, but her life would not seem enviable at all.
She lost her parents at a young age like me. An early marriage did not bring the happiness she had dreamed of. After a few months of marriage, her husband found out that he had a serious form of leukemia, which turned out to be incurable. His days were numbered. But suddenly, unexpectedly and to the delight of everyone, and especially Ema, one day he was getting better out of the blue. Unfortunately, Ema’s happiness did not last long. In six months, the disease returned and took such a merciless and cruel form that it killed its victim in a few weeks.
It took Ema several months to get out of depression and came back to normal. The most amazing thing was that she coped with grief on her own, without the support of close friends. Only a truly strong person in spirit and body is capable of such a thing. Although there were moments when it seemed to everyone that she was ready to commit suicide because of an irreparable loss. Still the girl managed to resist the misfortune. Therefore, I looked at her with great respect and endless admiration.
Although our friendship seemed strong, I still felt like Ema did not let me get close enough to her, so to speak, keeping her distance. Her actions as if were saying: “When I’m ready.” I didn’t insist, even though I didn’t understand what she meant.
“How are you?” Ema asked me.
“I want to know what the hell is going on with me?” I blurted out, again not knowing why. I looked straight into her eyes, and they seemed to encourage me to open up and not be afraid of the consequences.
“All in good time,” replied Ema, coming close to me. Despite the gusty wind, I could feel her hot breath and the scent of perfume.
“Did you know everything? But how?” I was amazed at the discovery.
“I was just waiting for your time to come. It remains to wait just a little bit more.”
She put her arms around my neck. It seemed that we were about to kiss, but it turned out to be just a friendly gesture. We never gave each other a reason for intimacy, even though I always wanted something more.
“Don’t think about anything right now. Forget what depresses you. Go home and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we’ll meet and you’ll be ready for a new stage of your life. Believe me it isn’t gonna be the same as before.”
After giving me a peck on the cheek, she took a step back. I noticed how her eyes sparkled with a green light. Maybe I was dreaming. I was at sixes and sevens at the time. Nevertheless, Ema’s words had a calming effect on me: thoughts stopped getting confused in my head; anxiety receded. I suddenly felt sleepy, and I staggered home, not remembering how we said goodbye.
3. Secret
I had no idea how I ended up in my old house where I spent all my childhood and part of my youth. However, there was no doubt that I got there. I recognized the family estate by the interior. Paintings by numerous artists of various eras and trends decorated the walls of all rooms. They even hung along the hallway and stairs leading upstairs.
The floors, covered with Persian and Uzbek carpets of bright colors, resembled lawns and meadows in the height of summer. They were made by hand, so I was strictly forbidden to run around the house in shoes: only barefoot or in slippers.
Curtains made of delicate silk of different colors covered the window spaces from the ceiling to the floor, barely allowing sunlight to get inside.
In general, everything here suggested that the owners, who were well-off, did not know anything of “design” since the atmosphere seemed rich, but tasteless. At first I thought that half of the house seemed to be missing altogether. It was only later that I realized: I saw only what was most firmly fixed in my memory. In other words, I found myself in my memories, and not in reality, because the family hearth sank into oblivion along with my parents.
After their disappearance without a trace under strange and unexplained circumstances, the house burned to the ground along with property worth millions of litas. Intuition told me that I was not here by pure chance. Something or someone deliberately brought me here. I was responding to the call, it sounded both in my head and from the outside. They were not words, but a completely different, incomprehensible feeling that cannot be explained but only experienced.
From the wide hallway I entered the living room, filled with Chinese porcelain vases, statuettes made of silver and bronze, rare books, furnished so closely so the was no room to swing a mouse. While I was looking around, examining familiar objects, the doors leading to my father’s office opened by themselves, and two silhouettes appeared before my eyes, shrouded in the rays of the bright sun.
After I came into the room, I recognized them as my long missing parents. A childish feeling of immeasurable joy suddenly came over me at the sight of my loved ones. I rushed to meet my parents, founding out that I was in the body of not an adult, almost thirty-year-old man, but a twelve-year-old teenager. I returned to the age when I saw them for the last time.
Now my father and mother appeared in front of me and looked very alive, as if they had never disappeared anywhere. If it was a dream, I wish it had lasted forever. My father, as always, dressed in his favorite strict classic suit (as I remember him most of all), with his coal-black hair combed back and piercing eyes like a southern summer night. He was strict, reserved and outwardly showed little emotion. Although I knew that deep down he was very worried, just by his nature he did not know how to show his emotions.
That was the way he was raised, so he just shook my hand and gave me a little hug, patting me on the shoulder, as he liked to do. My mother, on the contrary, did not hide her feelings: she hugged, kissed, stroked me for a long time, hugging me tightly to her chest, and did not want to let me out of her warm and tender embrace. Tears, without ceasing, flowed from her big blue eyes, brown hair carelessly scattered over her shoulders, and expensive perfume intoxicated me with an unearthly fragrance. Finally, we reluctantly freed ourselves from the embrace and pulled back a little to get a better look at one another. For a while, my parents looked at me with looks filled with love and sadness, understanding all the suffering and deprivation that I had gone through, having lost them during the most difficult period of my life.
“We know what you’re thinking, son,” the father began first, “but please don’t blame us and don’t blame yourself for what had happened. You know what will be will be. What is destined to happen cannot be avoided.”
“I just want to know the truth”, I replied with a hint of teenage protest in my voice. “The truth about what happened to you. The truth about who or what I am becoming or have already become. Moreover, is that connected somehow with the family secret that you have not revealed to me?”
At that moment, I was not an adult. Becoming a teenager, I behaved like a teenager: overwhelmed with emotions and feelings of indignation and pain, barely restrained myself from bursting into tears.
“We are hereditary Bernauses”, said my mother, approaching and taking my hands in hers. It always had a calming effect on me. She knew how to curb my violent temper. “Which can be translated from an ancient magical language (which you will have to learn) as ‘sorcerer, wizard, magician’. There are both positive and negative sides to this. The power that you already possess makes you a god among people. You are able to decide the fate of the world, to see the moments of the future, to control all the elements of nature, but the price for this is too high: none of the Bernauses does not live to old age. Each of them is destined to die young. The duration of life depends on the time of acquisition of power. The earlier you master it, the fewer years you have to live”.
There was a moment’s silence. It took me a little time to digest the given information I got. I just could not believe my ears.
“But if I don’t want these powers, can I refuse them?”, finally, I broke the silence.
“Do not fight against who you are by nature, but resist what they want to make you against your will. You have been given this gift, so use it. As for death, everyone will die eventually”. My father did not change his favorite manner of appearing to be a strict parent, although I guessed how hard he had been struggling against it.
“You see, Emilius, the Bernauses do not have magical powers from birth. They come to us over time, years later. If this happens, it means that we are ready to accept them, although not without a share of confusion and doubt. It is impossible to renounce the gift, but anyone can refuse in favor of another Bernaus only on one condition: if you have a premonition or you are sure of death in the near future. Most of us, however, will never know the hour of death, because it always comes unexpectedly without sending warning letters, and it is always tragic”. I felt how difficult it was for my mother to reveal this terrible secret, but there was no other way out. She let go of my hands and returned to her husband.
“You will have your own mentor. Usually the one who you are already familiar with and who had mastered the powers before you becomes them. The Bernauses are very closely related to one another on an intuitive level, so they choose only people of their own circle as friends and partners and do not let strangers into it”. My mother calmed me down by sweetening the bitter truth with an optimistic ending.
“However, you’ve known him, or rather her, for many years,” my father winked at me, smiling. Ema, I whispered. My parents exchanged looks as if they had read my lips, but did not say anything. Suddenly, their images began to fade away quickly. Their clear figures started turning into barely distinguishable silhouettes. An unknown energy seemed to grab me and pull me back into the darkness.
“Will I see you again?”. I shouted to my father and mother.
“We have fulfilled our mission and now, son, you have to live for us”. Their voices sounded in unison in my head.
“Are you real or just my imagination or my dream?” I was moving away from them further and further, and they were becoming more and more blurry pale spot.
“Yes and no. Knowing that anything may happen to us, we created a spell in the form of an illusion, which you would have to see when your powers came to you. Now it is losing its effect, because it has fulfilled its purpose. Goodbye, son! Be strong, and don’t say “no” when the moment comes to say “yes”. Their voices merged together, so I couldn’t distinguish one from the other, as if they were uttering by one being, and not by people of different sexes. The last phrase remained a complete mystery to me. The darkness pulled me into a funnel, and after a moment, I woke up.
4. New “I”
I understood that what had happened was not just a spell, but also a kind of initiation that I had to pass before joining the circle of the chosen ones in order to finally take my rightful place in this hidden world. Although I did not still receive answers to numerous questions, but something told me that the secrets would be out when the right time came. In the meantime, I had to study myself anew. I clearly realized that the new abilities could not only make life easier and bring many unforgettable adventures, but also complicate it, given my unrestrained temper. I was too hot-tempered and arrogant by nature. Regardless of that I quickly moved away from resentments. However, sometimes I spitted out what was on my mind or, on the contrary, I spoke out without thinking, so I made a lot of enemies because of that.
Of course, I didn’t think of myself being aggressive, but there was room for improvement. Having such powers and being agitated were a dangerous combination that could lead to very disastrous results. It was not difficult to guess where all this was coming from. The sudden loss of my parents and a drastic change in lifestyle left a long-term psychological trauma on my personality. I went from being a deity to nonentity. For this, I “thank” the orphanage which did not give me any life lessons, on the contrary, it ruined my self-esteem and self-importance my loved ones so carefully had been protecting.
Five years spent in that educational institution made me intemperate, anxious, overly touchy, but not vindictive to my surprise. Befriending me was hard. Nobody could not find a way to get through me either. I never obeyed to injustice and preferred being a loner most of the time. To be owned to someone was beyond me. I strictly had followed this rule until I met Ema.
In her person I found a soul mate, which I had been dreaming of for so long that I had already stopped believing I would find. Loneliness will surely break even the strongest ones, and there will undoubtedly be a “hunger” for friendly support and heart-to-heart chats. That was what happened to me: getting to know Ema changed everything. Despite her age, (she was a couple of years younger than me), we had a lot in common: under mysterious circumstances, both of us lost our parents; both of us were considered unsociable and lonely in life. Even our personalities resembled. Is that not what they call a coincidence?
I was 15 years old then, and I had been in that infamous orphanage for 3 years already. I will never forget the day I saw Ema for the first time. It was a sunny hot July evening, which was a rare thing there, given the elevated humid climate. Therefore, everyone, for sure, spent their time outside and they minded their own business. I can’t remember exactly what I was doing at that moment, when suddenly a shout flew around the area of the orphanage at the speed of light that newbies had been brought. Naturally all the guys, including me, consumed with curiosity, rushed to the main gate, through which a minibus passed and followed to the administration building.
The doors swung open and Ema got out first straightaway outshining with her beauty others whom I no longer paid any attention to. She was tall, slender, red-haired, with a freckled face and bright green eyes. This girl drove all the boys crazy. It was impossible not to notice her. Her grace attracted the admiring glances of the guys. The girls surely got envious. She looked around indifferently and blankly until her eyes rested on me. It was as if lightning flashed between us and left a slight trace of contact, which we never lost, even though we knew each other in person only a month later. It is all because of my shyness or pride, or all of them put together.
Our acquaintance happened under curious circumstances however. Once we were assigned to be on duty in the garden (by a lucky chance she was enrolled in my group). The duties included weeding and watering the beds. I was focusing completely on hoeing carrots, when suddenly the scream of Ema brought me out of my reflections and concentration on work. An unusual scene appeared before my eyes: a fragile girl was bravely struggling with a watering hose, from which a powerful stream of water was pouring to the fullest.
The sight was so eye-catching that I couldn’t help but laugh. The hose under the pressure of water kept popping out of Ema’s hands, flooding everything around, including the poor thing herself. Instead of letting go of it and turning off the faucet, she courageously and persistently continued to fight with it, trying to pacify the “ardor” of the hose.
I burst out laughing. Ema did not expect such impudence from me. Instead of help she got ridiculed. Indignation got over her what gave the girl strength to hold the hose jumping in all directions, hurry toward me and aim the whole jet of water at me. The pressure knocked me off my feet and threw me a couple of meters away. Angry but not feeling pain I ran up to her, tore the hose out of her hands and began to pour Ema from head to toe. Laughing and pouring water on each other we did not notice how one of the educators turned off the water and cursed us with words which “pigs” and “bastards” would be sounded the most polite and decent. Nevertheless, this episode became the starting point of our strong friendship.
Although Ema had platonic feelings for me, I fell head over heels in love with her. When she met Kayus, who was not a Bernaus, I had to put some distance between us, but we still did not break contact for good, because we were closely connected by a magical thread peculiar only to Bernauses. Once we find a soul mate, we cannot lose her or him anymore. Ema turned out to be just such a person – the closest of all. Her pain became my pain; her joy became my joy. We could not and did not want to violate the established order of things that existed in our kind, about which I still had to learn a lot.
My head was about to burst because of all these memories and the illusion I had experienced. My eyes were burning and seemed ready to pop out at any moment. In short, I was in such a state as if I had been partying all week long without getting sleep and having food, and for several days I had been suffering of the hangover. I barely forced myself to get out of bed, hoping that a cold shower would bring me back to normal.
I waddled into the bathroom and started splashing some water on my face. The light turned on (thanks to the automated system), and my eyes fell on the reflection in the mirror above the sink. What I saw shocked and scared me to death. From a brown-haired person, I turned into a blonde one. Actually my hair got whiter than snow, my skin became so transparent that I could even see the muscles of my face distinctly, and my eyes burned with red fire literally speaking. It was as if I transformed into a comic book monster. Out of anger and frustration I hit the sink with my fist, forgetting about my magical power, which splashed out of me like an invisible wave, smashing it to pieces along with half of the bathroom. A broken mirror, cracked walls and floor seemed to have fallen victims to an earthquake, even the lime fell from the ceiling. I closed my eyes trying to forget myself, when suddenly at the same moment someone persistently and continuously began knocking on my apartment door, ignoring the doorbell.
