– Two months before the formation of Nell’s Lacuna –
I stepped out of the car and the smell of burgers and fries immediately hit my nose. In other circumstances my stomach would be rumbling, but I wasn’t here for food.
“Nervous?”
Bo, with his sandy hair and relaxed smile, leaned against his freshly washed muscle car.
“You know it,” I said, looking at the run-down diner, its sign declaring “The Best Poutine!”. A bold claim with no competitor for miles to challenge it in this pocket of nowhere on the edge of a rural town.
“Not yet I don’t,” he said with a cheeky wink.
I slapped the hood of the car forcefully, trying to clear the jitters and Bo protested the treatment of his baby.
There was no point in agonizing over this any longer. The worst she can say is no.
A bell rang at the door as I stepped into the diner.
“Welcome!” someone called out from the back of the establishment, coinciding with the casual turning of heads from the regulars to see if they knew who had entered. Those looks lingered a little longer as they saw my tattoo sleeves and piercings, but then the diners turned back to their old friends, probably making some remark about the town going down the shitter.
Ceiling fans spun in lazy circles despite the cold autumn air outside, as if they couldn’t be bothered to turn them off. Christian country music played on the radio. These people would all have heart attacks if my band played for them.
I shut my eyes and breathed in the oily scents of the cheap diner food. My nose itched and I turned, bumping into a table.
“Pardon,” I said with a sarcastic drawl, my eyes still shut.
“Have- have a seat anywhere, sir. Coffee, tea?” the waiter stammered out.
I blindly shook my head and bumped my foot into an occupied chair, making the occupant mutter darkly.
“Actually,” I said as I breathed in deeply through my nose, “a beer?”
“This is a dry town, sir.”
“Probably a good thing,” I said, then took another long inhale. “I don’t even like beer, but you know what they say about desperate times.”
My hand felt the booth and I slid into it. “I’ll just get a burger and one of whatever this lady is drinking.”
The waiter didn’t say anything.
I opened my eyes and sitting across from me was a disgruntled looking man in his sixties, halfway finished with a pancake breakfast.
The familiar scent I’d been chasing grew weaker the longer I looked at him.
“What brings you into town, stranger?” he asked gruffly.
“Love. To say it brought me here is maybe wrong. I would use a more violent word.”
That got a few glances from the retired folks sitting across from us.
The man frowned deeply. “We won’t accept violent acts here, if that’s what you were insinuating.”
I shrugged.
The man set down his fork and knife, sighing.
“Be careful with love, son. Love strengthens all. It makes laughter brighter and wounds deeper. I’ve seen love tear people apart as much as bring them together. My parents were like that, living together as a beautiful mess. When I was a kid, that love made the world seem so colourful and soft. But then I lost them and the colours never looked the same.”
“You’ve told me this one before.”
The man frowned. “How could I? We just met.”
I reached across the table and placed my hand over his. He tried to pull away and I grasped it firmly, rubbing my thumb across his skin, pushing hard like I was trying to rub paint off of it.
“I never got to meet your parents,” I said softly, examining the wrinkles and spots.
When I looked back up at the man, he was gone, and Helen sat there with her perfect makeup and hair. The light scent returned, a lovely expensive perfume, citrusy with a hint of spice. I’d stolen it for her in the time before I made enough money to buy it.
She shared her angry expression with the old man.
“How did you find me?”
“After the Beacon in Sillwood I became more sensitive to it. The emanations every time you felt something. They were subtle, it took time to grow attuned to it. I lost the trail quite often and found myself running all over the provinces trying to catch it again.”
“You’re talking funny, using words like emanations.”
“I’m a different Alek from the one you knew.”
“Of course,” Helen said, leaning forward, curling her luscious lips in contempt.
“You ran. Like a scared little dog. When every other you was answering my call. When I had the city in the palm of my hand, ready to rip the pathetic masks off of everyone, you ran. Coward. You were too comfortable with your own mask. Too afraid to return to what you were like before we first met.”
I glanced away and regretted it. Every face in the diner, even the waitress peering in from the kitchen wore Helen’s face. I shook my head. “But I never met you. I have the memories, sure, but I was actually born during the Sillwood incident. A copy of the original. I’ve come to terms with that.”
She laughed. “You’re in denial. I know you, Alek. How many late nights did we spend together where you bared your heart to me? Your fear of irrelevance. Your desire to be someone powerful. Vodka loosened your tongue and you wanted me to scrape off the layers and see the real you. So don’t try to deny that. I know what I’m looking at.”
“Okay…” I whispered. “Maybe. You are right that I’m a coward. But I’m one of the few Aleks who lived. And I saw the footage the government tried to bury. It did something to me, Helen, to see me, a hundred me’s all being dumped into a fire. I died, Helen. Over and over. I can’t be the same person you knew.”
“Don’t get all mopey on me, it’s sickening. Kill or be killed, Alek. You’ve done plenty on both sides now. So don’t come crying to me, asking me to fix you.”
Helen grasped her shirt and pulled it up, wincing from the act, turning laboriously so I could see her back. I winced too when I saw the ugly puckered scar where she had been stabbed.
“You failed me, when I was so close to turning everything on its head. So why would I take you back now? You’re pathetic!”
“That’s…” I faltered. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Liar,” Helen turned back around with scorn in her eyes. “I see past the mask, Alek. Your love for me is at the center of who you are. So beg. Beg me to take you back and maybe I’ll consider it.”
“Blyat!” I shouted, trying to clear my head of the emotions reverberating against my skull. “I need you to let me go.”
“What? I’m not the one who makes you keep coming back. You’re the one who-”
“Seems like it’s getting a little heated in here,” someone interrupted cheerily. His voice soothed the raging sea in my head. I closed my eyes, breathing out, letting my hands unclench.
“Who the fuck are you?!” Helen spat. “Actually, I don’t care. Die.”
Bo just stood there, smiling and spinning his key ring around his finger like a wild west gunslinger.
Helen’s expression of confusion spread across every iteration of her in the diner. Several versions of her got up and left hurriedly.
“This is why I need you to let me go,” I said wearily. “I found someone else.”
Helen turned slowly to stare at me. After a minute of dead silence, she burst out into laughter. The cruel sound came from the mouths of everyone, like it was being played on repeat from twenty different speakers.
She wiped a tear from her eye and leaned back in the booth. “That’s a good one. What’s the angle here? Make me jealous so I take you back?”
“I’m serious.” Bo came over and rested his hand on mine, bolstering my nerves as I spoke, “We’ve done a lot of research on if it’s possible and it is. Witches have released Wolves in the past. When their goals stop aligning and the resonance becomes dissonant. We can-”
“Alek is straight!” Helen said loudly. “You are straight. And you don’t move on. You hold on to how things used to be. The glory days of the Ring. The fire of our passion when we were new lovers.”
“I can learn new things about myself,” I said. “You don’t know how I’ve changed. I’m asking you to let go of me.”
Helen turned up her nose. “That is a load of bullshit. A new mask that you’ve found and it fits just right. Delusion. Pure delusion.”
“Fine. Sure. Let me have it then. Maybe if I wear it long enough, it won’t be a mask anymore.” I brought my hands together, pleading. “I won’t ever come back. I don’t want to. I don’t see the person I used to know. If I ever did know you.”
“You say that but you don’t have the guts. You’re not man enough to face the consequences of that. You’ll lose everything. I’ll take it all back, with interest. Remember what your old condition was like? No more dancing. No more performing. Are you sure he can give that back to you?”
I just looked at her tiredly. “You know, for someone so obsessed with removing masks, you could really use one. I feel your unhappiness. It grows with time. It’s how I found you after so long.”
“Because you failed me!” she snarled, pounding her fist on the table, rattling the cutlery.
I looked solemnly at Bo. He shrugged and said, “Well, you tried. You followed through. I’m proud of you for that. Let’s go.”
Helen sprang up from the booth, butter knife in hand. The other Helens moved too, rising from their seats. “You don’t know which one is the real me! Even your new Witch boyfriend doesn’t know. You’ll never kill me. You’ll be chasing me forever.”
Bo snorted.
I stood up, facing her down. She clutched her weapon in wavering hands.
“Helen, you can keep haunting me. You can try to make me miserable. But that’s all you are, a ghost. I have to focus on living now.”
She flinched as I walked past her and headed for the door. Bo joined me, bumping my shoulder with his.
“You’re nothing without me!” she screeched. “Nothing!”
I held the door open for Bo as I mustered up the courage to not look back. Despite all the pain, something felt fresh and new in my heart.
“Do you hear something?” Bo joked.
The bell rung as the door swung shut on Helen’s curses.
“No,” I said. “Just the wind.”
Bo slid into the driver’s seat and I sank into the leather of the passenger side.
As we drove out onto the open highway, the pulses of spite and rage tapered away, replaced by the rumble of the engine and the sight of a beautifully clear sky.