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I sat next to my depressed cellmate, who has yet to even acknowledge my presence. The silence was starting to get on my nerves, and his lack of care was not helping. No matter how much time passed, the tears kept running down the edge of the mask, causing a small puddle to form under him. How anyone could cry that much was baffling to me. I didn’t know what to do, so I just started patting his back. As I did, he stopped crying and raised his head to look at me.
“Where did you come from?” he asked with a quaking voice. I didn’t know how to answer that since this was, as far as I knew, a part of my mind... or a part of the Realm of Stars, I guess.
“The door?” I replied cautiously. Pointing at the door to the cell, the man who I had realized looked starved and weak, looked at the door before shaking his head.
“But how? I locked it.” the masked version of myself asked in confusion. Each word he spoke, although clear and precise, sounded to be spoken out of fear.
“I don’t know. Sela told me to go through the door and the next thing I knew, I was in here with you,” I replied. An awkward silence rose between us for several long seconds, before the man shifted around, his worn clothes rustling against the cold stone floor of the cell as he did.
“You can’t trust Sela,” the masked figure said as if I already didn’t know that.
“I don’t trust Sela,” I replied, before sitting across from him against the hard cell wall.
“Yet, you are now trapped here… because you trusted Sela,” he said, as he finally sat with his stomach exposed, revealing that the masked figure was dressed just like me. Was he a part of me? If so, I’m a smartass piece of shit. Is this how everyone else feels around me? Mildly annoyed and awkward?
“Well, don’t you have the key? You can just let me out,” I said, hoping that I could get an easy way out. He thought for a moment, but quickly shook his head in fear before pulling his knees back up to his chest.
“I could… but if I open the door, they will come,” the man replied with a frightened, shaky tone. If this was a part of me, then I didn’t want it. There was no way that I was this terrified of anything… right?
“Who?” I asked curiously. Just what were these people that my other self feared so much?
“The one who wears the mask,” he said, as if he were too scared to even mention his name. If this was what Sela meant by me being broken, then how in the hell was I supposed to become whole again...? With this?
“The masked man is gone. We escaped from him,” I tried to rationally explain. Could I even be rational without the rational part of myself that Sela sent in my stead? Did I still have my rational side? I had no clue.
“No, you believe you are free from him… but he is always here. He lives within us, as a memory we don’t wish to remember. We do not feel the pain anymore, but we remember what it felt like. It will haunt us, and no one can rescue us from it,” he said, as he began scratching at his arm until blood poured from the scratches. Each scratch he made soon healed, like my wounds have, before he would scratch open another part of his fragile, skin-and-bone body.
“Then, we have to escape from it ourselves,” I replied, hoping to pep-talk myself out of this. He stopped scratching and looked at me. The intensity of his stare made me question my logic and the process that led me here.
“Do you see that we are in a cell? We have built it to keep others out, and to keep us safe within. Even so, the pain is here. It lines the walls and sticks to our skin like maggots on a corpse.” The walls changed to fit his description. Flat cell walls began to morph with a layer of spikes, and maggots fell from the ceiling. I got up quickly, trying to knock the organisms from my body in disgust while the small masked piece of me sat wallowing in pity and fear.
“You are a rather morbid part of myself,” I replied in disgust as the bugs and spikes began to disappear from the cell.
“Who said I am a version of you? We are one and the same. There is no difference between us. You have just cut ties with all of the emotions you don’t like, so you could ignore the truth. You even separated yourself from logic, because the ignorance seemed so blissful,” he said, in what I couldn't make out whether was disdain or self-pity, as he began to weep again silently.
“I won’t just sulk here like you. I am not you. Now give me the key!” I demanded, getting progressively louder with each word before standing above him like an enraged parent.
“No!” he shrieked like an arrogant child.
Grabbing him by the collar, I lifted him up with a threatening look. “Give me the key.”
“No. You will not let them in here!” he yelled in defiance, though he did nothing to fight back. It wasn’t like he could do anything to stop me if he tried. His body was skin and bones, with little to no muscle left on him.
“Too bad,” I said, before throwing him against the wall. When I did, I saw a key clatter to the floor. As I stepped towards it, the corpse-like body of a man lunged forward, grabbed it, and stuffed it into his shirt. From the impact of the wall, his mask was now partially broken on the top right, revealing some of his bloody forehead, which quickly healed back up.
“You can’t have it!” he bellowed as fearful tears streamed down his mask, and then curled into a ball. I had forgotten this feeling… this fear. This part of me is so afraid of being tortured by that masked freak, the same as how I felt when I was captured.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sliding my back down the wall opposite of him until I had returned to my resting position on the floor as well. “I forgot that you are a part of me, whether I like it or not. We were scared and unable to change our fate. I hate that we’re weak, but all we can do to change that is to get stronger.”
“Well, you can become stronger without me,” he replied with a broken voice.
“No, we cannot get stronger unless we are united. Sela probably knew this. They weren’t talking about me destroying myself because of time travel, but because we’re so unstable. You need to be a part of me. We can’t stay separated forever,” I said as if I was pleading with him. I didn't know how else to solve this.
“You can, and will. Now, stop bothering me,” he said, before turning away.
“You’re a dick,” I replied.
“Well, so are you,” he countered.
“Touché.”
“Are you going to try to take the key from me again?” he asked whilst peeking at me from across the cell.
“Yes, we need to get out of here,” I replied with the truth.
‘Well, that’s too bad,” my masked counterpart said with my usual sassy tone. Arguing with him was leaving me fatigued as a result.
“Let me guess. I’m going to have to fight you for it?” I asked with a defeated sigh.
“No, you’ll have to kill me for it,” he said, before taking the key from under his shirt, lifting up the mask enough to expose his mouth, and swallowing the key whole. I didn't have time to comprehend what he was doing, before the cell echoed with a loud gulp.
“Oh… fuck.” There was a mix of shock and confusion on my face. It was as if my entire body froze up without warning, and I began to feel an emotion that I could not identify. Hatred, fear, desperation, disgust, intrigue, natural instinct, this was none of these. Perhaps it was all of them at once. All I knew was that I hated this feeling, and that I may have just lost my last chance at freedom.
***
Lou sat on the floor of the apartment in a meditative position. His legs were crossed and his back was straight. The room, however, seemed to be in a more rambunctious state. Elysif and Scott were both circling around Lou like watchful guards, hoping that whatever he was attempting would work, but all it seemed to do was break his concentration. Lou could not be annoyed, though, nor could he be bothered by their watchful eyes, since it wouldn’t be logical to. However, he attempted to fake his expressions around certain people, like Elysif, but to no avail.
Elysif assumed that he was sulking or sad because of his demeanor. She was right in a way, but no one could have possibly guessed what was really going on. He wasn’t depressed, but the part of him still trapped in that cell was. Elysif tried consoling him as well as giving him space, because although she didn’t know that he wasn’t the true Lou, she understood what he had just gone through. The cold and logical part of Lou respected Elysif for her understanding. Mainly because it made his act seem natural.
Lou had been attempting to time travel based on the plan the trio had made before. Even as a different piece of himself, Lou had memories of this. Within a few moments of meditating on the 5th of August, Lou began to feel light as he had the last time. His body morphed into looking transparent before quickly disappearing. Scott and Elysif stared in awe at the sight, not just because they were impressed, but because no magic style that they knew of could even come close to replicating it.
Opening his eyes, Lou was in the exact same place within the apartment as he was before. The shades were closed, though, and Scott was laying on the couch asleep. Lou stood up and began lightly slapping Scott’s cheek to wake him up. The poor drunk shot up in a panic before looking up at him. “Lou? What in the blazes are you doing waking me up?” he asked with a groaning stutter.
“I’m not Lou. I’m from the past to ask you some questions, remember?” Lou asked with a serious look.
“Huh?” Scott looked up at him with an I’ll-be-damned expression. “So I’m guessing you want to know where the murders happen?”
“Yes,” Lou replied in a calm but pressing tone.
“You know where Dutfield’s Yard is, right off of Berner street? A woman was killed there. Her name is Elizabeth Stride,” Scott said with a yawn before looking around for a nearby bottle.
“When was she killed?” Lou asked with an interested expression before picking up one of the bottles and handing it to Scott.
“A little after midnight on the 30th,” Scott said with a small stretch and another, much louder, yawn. Though he refused to rub his eyes for fear of keeping himself awake for too long.
“That’s only two days after I left,” Lou thought aloud.
“I know. There’s one other thing you should know,” Scott said before pulling the cork out of the rum bottle and drinking some of the contents.
“And what’s that?” Lou curiously asked.. If there was something else then something must have gone wrong.
“There was another murder that we failed to prevent. Another woman was killed in Mitre square right after. The victim's name was Catherine Eddowes,” Scott said with a depressed sigh.
“We’ll find a way to stop both,” Lou reaffirmed him with a nod.
“You told us the exact same thing when you came back, and it didn’t work,” Scott said, shaking his head.
“Do you know why it didn’t work?” Logically there had to be something that they could do to prevent it. The more information he had, the better. Though, Lou knowing more information may be a bad thing since it becomes set in stone.
“You lost your senses and began to attack the Changeling after we had captured him.” Shaking his head, Scott recalled the incident with a regretful attitude. “You kept demanding he tell you where the masked man was, which eventually allowed him to escape.” Scott replied with a pained expression before taking another swig from the bottle.
“Then you’ll just have to stop me,” Lou replied. It sounded so simple and logical, but probably wasn’t either.
“You say that like it was easy,” he scoffed with a shake of his head and a yawn.
“Well, I guess I better get going,” Lou said, before sitting on the floor in the same position he was in before. Within a few moments of meditating like before, he began to disappear just as he had done before. The lighting changed from a dark and somewhat cold room into a bright and warm, midday room between the closing and opening of his eyes. Scott and Elysif were standing in similar spots as they were before, but they seemed different. As soon as the two realized he was back they burst into tears with laughter.
“What’s going on?” he asked befuddled, before looking down to see that he was sitting on around twenty empty rum bottles that had been placed upright in the same spot as he had been before.
“It seems that when you travel through time you can’t pass through objects,” Elysif giggled humourously.
“And what would have happened if I could? Would I permanently have a rum bottle inside me?” Lou asked, feigning anger along his logical question.
“Well, you would either become part rum bottle or cause an explosion,” Scott answered.
“And you really wanted to test this?” Lou asked, questioning the care and sanity of his companions as he did.
“"Absolutely,”” they both said in unison.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
