The Final Day

  I don’t know when I fell asleep. I barely made it back to the girl’s home before I did. Seeing Marcus react as if he didn’t know what the Quiet was just… drained the energy out of me. I realized then that both he and Livia had a role to play in that tavern. The denial and the insistence of the Quiet. It wasn’t like a real argument. Each was saying what everyone needed to hear. ‘There is nothing to worry about,’ Livia said, day after day. ‘You’re not crazy or irrational for worrying,’ Marcus assured in response. They may have been contradictory, but it wasn’t so strange that the same people needed to hear both. That they could internalize and believe both. It was a survival mechanism. To keep their feet from growing roots like mine always wanted to. To live outside of the still world that felt safe but suffocating. Losing either one of them was crippling, and I wasn’t the only one who felt it.

  It didn’t help that I was useless. I found dozens of people who needed my help, and I failed to help any of them. I didn’t know what to do. I left before I had to watch Marcus die. I didn’t want to see how Livia would react. I’d forgotten I’d seen her leaving that sick temple service in the garden. She denied the Quiet as she always had, but it had lost its effect when she genuinely believed the words she was saying. Rather than a promise that we didn’t need to worry, it was a reminder that none of us were safe. I didn’t want to watch Margaret respond to Marcus’ corpse like Junia responded to her mother’s. So I left. I found more people who needed my help. I failed to offer anything to any of them. But I was alright. Because I went to the girls. I kept them fed, and I kept them company, and that was enough for this loop. I told stories of Camilla, and I taught the children the same dance Camilla once taught me.

  And then I was on the final day again. Margaret had resigned herself to doing things my way for this loop, and she didn’t complain for most of the morning. Living through these three days as they were one time had value, even if I wasn’t actually helping anyone. And I had to help the way that Mars could help, which meant understanding what these days looked like. As I grew more confident in this decision, Margaret pushed me less. She barely spoke at all, in fact. At least, until we made it to somewhere populated. We were in the market again, since it was the most obvious indicator of change from day to day. It didn’t take us any time to spot the change this time. The obvious spread of whatever was taking people’s minds and presenting a different reality to them.

  “Why would anyone want this?” Margaret whispered. I swallowed hard as I watched the people around me. The same woman from the same bakery stood behind the same counter. She was dead. Next to her, an older man stood greeting customers. Each walked in and happily greeted both the man and the corpse. Each left their money on the counter, waited patiently for their food, then turned and left.

  It was so much more peaceful than the horrors Margaret had inflicted on that town. It was so much more violent. Every smile on every face was a torn and bleeding wound. The blindness of the townspeople to such injuries was far more visceral to me than any murder I had witnessed. I awkwardly and messily rolled Margaret’s question around my head like a broken egg, and thought back to something my sister had told me years before. I wasn’t sure if I had an exact answer, but everything I was looking at had a familiar aesthetic, like a different scene by the same painter. I thought about Liva and Marcus, and the way they worked together to make the tavern feel safe and validating at the same time. Only a few hours before, I was just as lost. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to do this to these people. I still couldn’t explain why they were hurting Junia and Millie like they were, but I had an idea about their overall motivation. It was the smiling that told the story. That sickly, forced smiling. So I offered her the best answer I could.

  “For control,” I responded quietly. I got a few glances from passersby, but I was no longer concerned with such looks. If anything, it felt better to see them phased by anything at all, even if it was my own odd behavior.

  “That’s clear enough,“ Margaret agreed, “they are clearly controlling people. But why would they do this with that control? I don’t understand.” I shook my head.

  “No, that’s not…” I trailed off, trying to sort through my thoughts. I was a concept I hadn’t understood for much of my life, and I’d never tried to articulate it before. Margaret’s ghostly, teal eyes locked onto me, patiently waiting for my answer. I took a deep breath and tried again. “There are different kinds of control, and there are different things that people wish for control over. You’re right. Someone is controlling these people; that’s obvious enough. But it’s not what I meant. Not quite like your father, or my grandmother. But not unlike them either. It’s almost like… I don’t know how to describe it. An attempt at self-control through the control of others?”

  “Like when a man blames his leering on your clothing and tells you to change?” Margaret guessed. I shrugged.

  “A bit like that, sure, but not exactly. It is equally ineffective, in any case. But, at least at first, it’s less about shifting blame. It’s more about environment. About a refusal to face the world as it is by demanding that the world change around you. There are so many ways to do it. So many people who can get hurt in the process. But I think that must be why. Because they can’t accept what the world has become, and every person who does accept hurts them. It hurts to see. It hurts to be surrounded by. It makes reality impossible to escape, and your helplessness in the face of it burns like scalding water,” I explained.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Margaret crossed her arms and watched the line of smiling shoppers buying their sickly sweets. They were rotating, I realized. There weren’t enough people left in the city to maintain this level of business for every shop, so the same people were coming in over and over again. Eating, leaving, then coming back and rejoining the line. They would eat themselves sick if whoever was commanding them didn’t stop soon.

  “How could you know that?” Margaret asked. I bit my lip.

  “Look at the smiles, Margaret. Look at the lift in their chins and shoulders. Listen to the whistle the man in the overalls keeps repeating over, and over, and over. Imagine you had never seen the Quiet. Imagine you didn’t know anything was wrong, and you were just out about your day as usual. Wouldn’t it look something like this?” I asked.

  Margaret immediately shook her head. “No. There is nothing real about this. This is like a bad play by a writer with a sick fetish. Even if I had no idea, I would know this was wrong,” she replied. I let out a breath and closed my eyes.

  “You’re right. It is. But… what if you wanted to believe it? What if you were desperate to believe everything was okay? As desperate as I was to trust my grandmother and mentor? As desperate as you were to trust your father? If you wanted to believe not just one man was better than he was, but the entire city had more hope than it did. If you could close your eyes to the corpses and only take in what you wanted to see? I know you know what that’s like. I do too. If that was you, what would this look like?” I asked again. Margaret was silent for a long moment. For the fourth time, the whistling man ordered a personal pie and ate it before turning to leave. Each bite was slower this time, like he was struggling to keep it down. Whoever was doing this needed to let him stop.

  “But… how do you know that’s it?” she asked again. I sighed.

  “I really don’t,” I answered. “But…” I trailed, watching another patron struggle to eat. “Why don’t they let them stop. These people can’t keep eating. Can’t they send them to another shop for a while?” Margaret swallowed audibly, despite her incorporeal state.

  “I didn’t order my nephew to kill my sister,” she whispered.

  “I know that. I understand,” I replied, a little confused. I didn’t realize she was answering my question.

  “I mean, my command wasn’t direct. I didn’t have such perfect control. Whoever is doing this, I don’t think they realize this is happening,” she clarified. My heart sank. She was right. And I couldn’t stop them either. At least not this loop. I couldn’t watch it anymore.

  “Come with me,” I said, switching back to the subject I’d gotten distracted from. “I want to try something, and I’ll tell you a story when we get there. To answer your question.”

  “Of course I’ll come with you. It’s the only place I exist,” Margaret chuckled. I paused. It was the first time she had said something in such a familiar tone. The first time I’d heard anything like a laugh from her. I smiled softly.

  “Yeah, I suppose that’s true,” I agreed. The two of us walked through the city and toward the center, leaving the grotesque bakery behind.

  “Where are we going?” Margaret asked.

  “The spell that starts the loop comes from near the city center,” I responded. “I can never get near it; it always pushes me away. I want to see what happens if I wait where it starts.”

  Margaret seemed to accept this, walking in silence for a few more moments. “Why haven’t you tried it before?” She questioned. I thought for a long moment.

  “I guess… I was afraid it would work,” I replied.

  “And you aren’t now?” she pushed. I shrugged.

  “No, I am. But… I don’t know. I feel a little more ready to fail, I guess,” I said. It was the best explanation I had. I didn’t realize how much I had already changed. Not yet.

  “You never seemed that afraid of failure when you were up against me,” Margaret challenged. I actually laughed at that before I realized what I was doing.

  “You think so, huh?” I chuckled. “That is genuinely good to hear, even if it’s not even a little true.”

  “If you say so,” Margaret grumbled. “You were certainly persistent for a woman who was terrified, though.”

  “I have to be,” I replied. “It’s the only tool I have. To be better than who I was before. It makes sense, in a way. That the tool I’d be left with would be persistent failure.”

  “What do you mean?” Margaret asked, the ring of something not unlike concern in her voice.

  “My sister was always exceptional. With her magic and with everything else. I only ever had an exceptional focus, but rarely exceeded expectations in my use of it. She could always do everything the first time she tried it. I always had to try dozens of times before I learned anything. I never resented her for this. I admired her. But I hurt her anyway. That was the first time I really failed, I realize that now. And I’ve been failing ever since. I just… I suppose it’s fitting that I’ve finally found a way to help people, and it’s through persistent and repeated failure until I get it right. What a fitting way for me to finally be exceptional,” I lamented.

  Margaret scowled. She looked like she wanted to say something, but eventually changed her mind. “So what’s this story about? The one you wanted to tell me as an answer to my question?” she asked instead.

  “What else?” I laughed. I found a stone bench as we reached my best guess for the origin of the spell that would both end and start the loop. I sat down, watching the sky as I waited for the end to grow closer. “It’s a story about my big sister.”