Chapter 91: I miss Kerrass (2)

Success!

“So what do you have in mind?” I asked.

“Do you know somewhere that might be a little bit more private?” He asked as he picked up his bag again.

“I know just the place Sir, Little square I know, just down here.”

I took his hand and gently led him down the ally and into the square. A walk of maybe two minutes and I pulled his arm around my shoulders. He felt warm and soft. It reminded me of how tired I was. So desperate to sleep. Just a little drink.

I led him into the square, away from the street lights and from the prying eyes that might spot us from the street and turned to kiss him.

Odd, that it seemed to happen so slowly. It felt like I had plenty of time, loads of time to protect myself. To throw up an arm or scream or something. I saw his arm come up, an odd gleam of light reflected in the hooked blade of the long knife, that reached out and with an almost leisurely movement he slit my throat. My first thought was that it didn't hurt. The second thought was that I was wet.

Again, I could see the reverse movement. He had cut my throat with a forearm slash, spun the knife and cut the other side with a back handed cut.

I found that I couldn't breathe. I choked, coughed and tried to claw at the wound. Thick liquid spurted between my fingers. I tried to scream but no sound would come out.

I felt another question. Would I bleed to death? Or would I choke on my own blood?

Dear God in heaven. I was going to die here.

I fell. Probably going to bleed to death then. I felt weak. Some element of me was still trying to run. My leg jerked.

My John crouched next to me and reached into the large and heavy bag at his side. He produced a large roll of what looked like leather and unrolled it. From that he took out a smaller knife.

Rather redundantly, the edges of the wounds in my neck had begun to sting.

It was almost funny.

The pain as he cut into my stomach was indescribable. I tried to curl around the injury, to protect it from him but my protests were weak and he easily batted away my hands. Another almost ridiculous thought but dear God it hurt. I saw him cut into me. He seemed cold, clinical as though he knew that he could take his time.

This work is hosted on mananovel.com

God just let me die. Let me die now. Just take me, don't make me feel it while he cuts into me. Don't make me feel it. Just let me die. Surely I've lost enough blood by now.

I felt the tears at the corners of my eyes. Another ridiculous thought.

I was wrong. “Ripper” is the right word name for him.

Just let me die.

Please.

-

Darkness again.

But not for long.

I find my voice and scream into the darkness.

A flash of light. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

-

I've made a mistake. I should have known it really but I was so hungry that it has become necessary to leave the den and go looking for food.

The cubs are hungry my mate is hungry. I'M hungry and we could all just do with a nice chicken, or a rabbit or two but it would seem that that was too much to ask for today.

It's not going to be long before I'm going to have to make a decision. Do I have to leave the chicken that I've got clamped between my jaws.

I heard the first horn a little while ago. I don't think it's going to be long now before I see the first, red coated horsemen. Not long now.

I slink along through the ditches, trying to keep low, trying to stay in the water to mask my scent and throw of the hunters. Not that there's much hope of that but these are the things that you have to try. But those blasted bloodhounds are too good at this game for that. But you have to try.

That latest horn sounded as though it was closer.

Fuck, fuck fuck, fuck, fucking fuck.

Why today? I'd been safe in my den for the last three days. It's the season for the hunts and I know that so

I've been keeping my mate and the cubs inside in an effort to keep us safe. I didn't want to go out now. I didn't want to but it was somewhat frustrating to know that if I had gone out yesterday then I would have made it home by now.

They haven't seen me yet though. There is still hope. I take another grip on the chicken that I had stolen from the farmers yard. The better able to carry it with me and I drive myself on. Low to the ground, that's the ticket. Stay in the undergrowth. Stay low where my red fur and bushy tail can't be seen.

Past experience tells me that they don't want to let the hounds go until the last possible moment for fear that the expensive hounds can injure themselves, get lost or tired out. So I need to stay out of sight, move slowly and carefully, moving through the gaps in the grass rather than pushing the grass down for my to move over it.

So here we go. Choice time.

There are two routes from here towards where my den is with my mate and the cubs. One way is over the flat fields and the other is through the forest and the tress and the undergrowth.

The fields provide flat, open ground where I can run easily and put on speed. There will be no undergrowth for my tail, feet or prey to get caught on as I drag it off and I will be able to use all of my speed. My instincts are screaming at me that this is the right way to go.

But the woods have the cover. Yes it's slower, yes it's more overgrown but in turn that will make it more difficult for the hunters to spot me and catch me.

But every instinct in me is wanting me to run. To put as much speed on me as I can, I'm almost quivering with the desire to turn my tail and speed away.

I have to take a deep breath and calm myself down. The choice is clear.

I turn my nose towards the trees and carry on slinking ever onwards. Nose and body low, dragging the chicken along the ground. Probably doing far too much damage to it and making far too much of a mess of the undergrowth making me easy to spot.

Slowly though slowly does it. Time my movements with the wind.

The forest is getting closer now. I can see it, it only seems a short run away but that last burst of speed and distance is the dangerously seductive one. The one where it's easiest to get caught. But relative safety being so close is seductive it's....it draws you in like a nice warm den with yours and your mates tail wrapping each other for warmth against the chill of the early mornings.

I nearly snarl with anger and fear. I had failed. I was already dead.

The Farmer had come out of the woods and I could hear more humans with him. The farmer had his fire stick bent over his arm along with his own dog walking at his side.

Damn. Damn damn damn damn damn.

Dead already.

It's a physical effort of will not to keen my grief into the wind so that my mate and all the others can hear it.

But that won't feed the cubs.

I take a short moment to control myself but I don't have long. The farmers dog has just lifted his huge head. I see the human bend to ask the dog something. I had been sniffed. I backed away as slowly and carefully as I could.

Looks like I'm going to get that run over the field that I wanted after all.

I go a little way back into the long grass and quickly dig a hole, burying the chicken inside after taking a quick mouthful to give me strength. I spray the mound that this has left with my scent in the hope that my mate might be able to find it and bring it to our children so that my death might not be in vain.

Then I take a step back and look up at the sky sucking down deep lungfuls of soft, beautiful air before

sniffing carefully to try and discover where my killers were prowling.

There was another task here. They would think that I would be running for my own den so I must lead them away. My mate might not find the chicken but I might be able to draw the hunters away, even a little.

I sniff the air carefully and I'm off. Just a gentle run at first. I will want to save the real speed for when they spot me. I need to draw the hounds out and then lead them on a chase in an effort to tire them or even, hopefully injure them. Maybe I can even take one or two down with me.

Unlikely but still. A fox can hope.

I come to the edge of the cover. The urge to hide is back on me now but I know that won't work. I've seen it happen before where the hounds have sniffed out good friends.

I take a breath and charge out. Quicker but still not as fast as I can go.

I don't have to wait long before I hear the first horn call. The first horn that is joined by another and another.

Then comes the thunder of the horse hooves and the yammering of the dogs.

I run.

In the distance I can see the small group of trees where I have made my home this season. She will never hear me but I bark out my farewell to that place and to that female. I had liked that one. Liked her enough that I hoped that we might mate again. She had real spirit.

But I needed to concentrate now. The thunder was getting closer and I found that I needed to control my breathing.

Closer, closer. I looked over my shoulder to see them and waved my tail. The dogs saw me, or smelt me or whatever it is those stupid bloodthirsty bastards do. They became aware at me and they tore at their ropes. I laugh back at them.

“Never catch me.” I jeered at them and pissed to show my disdain.

Maybe, if I get them good and angry they will kill me quicker.

I take off again. Quick as a shot before finding another rise to goad my enemies.

But I'm being steered. Off to my right I see another group of horsemen in their absurd red coats. Don't they know that we can see them easier if they wear red?

But that's ok.

They've let the hounds off the lead now.

Leave it just long enough for the hounds to be beyond the range of someone calling them back before I shoot off giving it everything I have.

It feels good. The air tastes sweet.

I can see them encircling me from the right though. The hunters and the other pack of hounds. They must think I don't know that that's what's happening.

I feel myself grinning as I hear the barks of triumph from the dogs. They think they've caught me. They think that they're the clever ones.

Hah.

I let them encircle me. I mustn't let them make a sport of it. If I stand at bay then they will let the dogs take their time tearing me apart. I must make them kill me quickly.

I see the dogs. Now this second group have been let of their leash. I laugh at them.

They growl their own anger and frustration. Their scorn and their hate drips from their teeth. For a moment I feel sorry for these things. They have been bred and trained for this purpose but now I must show them how a fox can die.

I pick out the second biggest dog and charge him.

The other dogs roar as I do so.

I don't make it before I get barrelled aside.

I don't manage much as the teeth tear into me. I just manage to latch my teeth onto one poor bastard and lock my jaw.

I hope the bastard feels it.

-

Darkness.

“Wait,” I scream into the darkness. “WAIT,”

A flash of light.

-

There are chains round my wrists, chains round my ankles and chains round my neck. So many chains that I can barely remember what it felt like to not have that constant weight, pulling me down.

I'm so tired. So tired and hungry that the pain in my belly and my chest is now like an old companion. I remember once, my mother told me that pain is a friend that we should cherish because it reminds us that we're still alive. She use to maintain that the pain would go away when we die.

I hope so.

But I want to live. I want to live so much. I want to see my husband again. I want to hold him in my arms and to see my children.

But it's not going to happen now.

I'm so tired.

We're led out into the square. There are four of us. A human at the front of the line who's dressed in bright colours with an absurd hat on. He claims to be a bard or a poet of some kind or another but I don't believe him. Even Loredo wouldn't hang a poet. I heard that he'd been accused of collaborating with the Scoia'tael which is frankly ludicrous. Not that humans wouldn't sympathise with the plight of the elves in the woods but more because the man seems far too stupid for it. The Scoia'tael are too clever to use idiots like him.

From the look of the dandy though it's much more likely that he seduced Loredo's favourite whore and now was being punished for it. The fact that his charge had been changed from Collusion to debauchery added to that.

Heh.

Hanging for debauchery. Is there a person in Flotsam at all that wouldn't be guilty of that crime? Loredo least of all.

Then there's the dwarf. Accused of collusion like my fellow elf in the line. Much more believable although I doubt it. They say that Iorveth is distrusting of dwarves and prefers to serve with Elves. I can't comment. I've tried to keep my head down in that kind of thing. Another piece of my mothers advice there.

“Keep your head down and do as your told.” She said, “and they'll leave you alone.”

I did my best to do that, but then I resisted when the guard sergeant tried to rape me. My mother had managed to curse me with blonde hair and the kind of good looks that humans find attractive.

All I did was say no.

But now I'm a Scoia'tael terrorist about to hang.

I've been beaten and raped many times since then. I heard one of the guards complaining that they actually wanted to keep me around for much longer as I was “a good way to relieve stress”.

But it was not to be.

They still had their entertainment though. I was dressed in a shirt and trews that was open to the waist. They might as well just pull what remains of my breasts out of the shirt for all to see. It would probably save everyone time.

They pull us out into the crowd. The crowd sounds interesting. They hate the fact that we're being hanged because they hate Loredo with an unbound and uncompromising hatred. The merchants hate him for his taxes and the elves hate him for his oppression of our people. But no-one in flotsam is going to miss the opportunity to see a good hanging.

Someone throws vegetables because of course they brought vegetables. I keep my head down. I just want it to be over with now.

The last of my fight was beaten out of me two nights ago when I was told that they were going to hang me. I tried to tell them that my only crime was to say “no,” so they struck me in the jaw with a mailed fist, breaking it, and causing me to bite a good chunk of my tongue off. The blood trickling down my throat made me vomit.

But now that this is it. I just want it to be over.

We are led through the crowd and up to the scaffold where one of Loredo's men is waiting for us as our executioner.

Bastard.

I'm too weak to struggle as they put me on the trap door and put the noose round my neck. If I was braver I would try to jump in an effort break through the trap door, Not that I think I'm heavy enough to burst through the trapdoor but the thought occurs.

So very tired.

At least I'm on the end of the row. That means I'll be first to drop and perform the gallows dance. It doesn't look like it's a long drop so there's a very real chance that I won't break my neck. Apparently Loredo likes to watch us dance before we swing. Seems a little redundant now as he hasn't attended a hanging for months.

Maybe if I jump as high as I can, just before the trapdoor goes. Maybe the extra distance will help my neck to break.

Unlikely though.

It's a difficult balancing act. To help the neck breaking or to get my neck to stretch that much quicker, I need to be heavier, stronger. But on the other hand that would give me more stamina to withstand the fall and the strangulation.

Gods and goddesses above and below but I want this to be over with now. The peacock on the other end of the row has spotted someone in the crowd that he recognises. Someone he knows and presumably has a claim of friendship with. He's calling for help. Stupid fool. No-one will help us. We're already dead. The more he kicks up a fuss, the more entertaining it is for everyone and the longer that they'll prolong things.

He should just shut up. Let them get on with it. The faster to get it over with.

I can't help it though. I scan the faces of the assembled townsfolk, looking for a friend. Someone who might be sad to see me go.

I can't see anyone and for a moment my eyes sting with tears. I'm going to die alone.

I need to take solace from the fact that my family fled as soon as they heard that I had been taken. Again, none of them were involved with the rebels but once one member of the family swings then they'll soon come for the rest.

I should be glad. Glad that there's no-one to watch as that means that they are all beyond the reach of the hangman. That disgusting, fat, filth in the hood.

It turns out that I can still feel something. I can feel hate.

I'm surprised though. I thought I would hate Loredo for sentencing me, or for the Sergeant for choosing me to slake his lusts against when there are many perfectly good prostitutes in the brothel that are ready and willing. I don't hate my family for fleeing or myself for not agreeing to the Sergeants demands. But I hate that executioner with every fibre of my being.

I can see that he has an erection. He uses the odd movement as he goes about his business to grope himself occasionally.

I hate him so much.

He takes the time to fondle my breasts as he positions me over the trapdoor.

Bastard.

The peacock's friend is fighting his way through the guards and the crowds to get to the scaffold and I feel a fluttering of hope.

It is an alien feeling and I almost shrink from it in fear and terror. The man has white hair and two swords on his back. He's capable and is tearing through the guards.

But he won't make it in time. Not to save me.

The hangman takes a hold of the lever that works my trapdoor.

My body betrays me. It doesn't want to die despite how tired I am. I feel panic and adrenalin flood through my system. I try to open my mouth to scream, to protest. To do anything. To spit my hate at the hangman but it's too late. Far too late.

The lever is pulled and I fall.

It hurts.

It hurts so much. I have time to feel my eyes bugging out of my face and my tongue swelling in my mouth, almost enough to choke me.

I will the feelings to leave my body. I try to jerk around in an effort to break my own neck or make the strangulation happen faster but what little strength I have left is failing me.

Oh just let it end.

I don't want to feel this pain any more

So very tired.

-

Darkness.

But I am ready for it this time.

“WAIT!” I scream into the void.

“Wait?” he says. “What for?”

“I just need.... I need a minute.”

“Ah, you need a rest.” I hear him sigh. “Very well. I would have thought you would want to get your day of service over and done with as quick as possible. But if you want to break it up with pauses then that will only delay your return to the real world. But very well.”

I could almost feel him smile.

“Your fear of what follows is very gratifying anyway.”

“Bastard.”

He laughed.

“What did you think was going to happen Lord Frederick? A day where I would run around Toussaint, murdering people in your body. What on earth for? My name is already indelibly inked on that place. Laughing Jack is a story that will be told for centuries now. There will be a period of copycats followed by a period where people will look out into the darkness and wonder whether your Empress and the Witchers really caught me or whether the authorities just told them all that Jack had been captured.

“Then people will look out into the night and wonder if I'm waiting for them. In that shadowed alley or behind that tree as the road darkens in the distance.

“The story of Jack will be used to frighten children into going to bed and to do their chores and all the while, the people of Toussaint and eventually the world will know that no matter what happens. Their lords and masters cannot keep them safe from people like....

“Jack,”

He laughed again. Not the mad laughter of the figure that we had chased through the Toussaint night. This was different. Warmer somehow, more genuine and far, far more calculating.

“Besides. I promised you that I wouldn't. I promised, and I quote, “I guarantee that you will not be a murderer. You will not harm any of those people that you love. Nor will you kill anyone or take the lives of anyone. You will not, in fact, have any real effect on the world around you. I can guarantee that you will not perform any act that goes against your conscience.”

“Now yes, some people might argue that you would not be the murderer. That I would be the murderer but that would be semantics and we both know. After all, something else I said is also true.

“My word is my bond,”

I could see him now hanging in the darkness. Nothing like the man that I had seen in that other world, nothing like Laughing Jack or the Jack that I had seen in my dreams. He was humanoid, if anything he looked more like an elf but...more elflike and utterly, utterly alien. His skin was white. Bleached white, the kind of white that not even albino's manage. His face was almost elongated which is why it reminded me of an elven face in that his chin was long and pointed while his cheekbones were high. His ears were much longer and pointed than an elves were. But the skin was hard. As I looked I realised that calling it skin was incorrect, it was more like he was scaled. There was a beauty to his face, hard and terrible beauty that found it's home in the eyes. Jet black pupils surrounded by glowing white Irises.

He was dressed like a noble gentleman fresh from court. Shirt and doublet immaculate in black and red colouring, his riding boots polished to a mirror shine and his cape hung around his body in a way that reminded me of the wings on a bat.

He wore a long hat like he had worn in that other world and his cane was cradled in his arms.

He didn't have hands. They were more like talons.

His eyes were shining with amusement.

“I have been thinking about things Lord Frederick and I have decided to give you a gift with no expectation of reward or return as it will serve my purposes well.” He said after regarding me for a while. “At first I was going to forbid you from writing about your experiences with me but I have changed my mind. I encourage you to write about me. Tell your readers what we have talked about and what I have said. It will do me good to have at least one world and time where they know that I exist and what I am. It will change nothing as they will still fear that I am out there in the dark. But it will give them a name and a face to fear instead so write about me.”

He grinned.

“They may even believe you.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“Why? Because you asked the question of course. Nothing comes for free.”

“But why this?” I was nearly weeping with pain and horror.

He smiled at me again.

“Because I can?”

He laughed.

“A joke, Lord Frederick. A joke.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I will let you have that one although it is beneath your not inconsiderable talents as a writer and a debater. This is why my children like to trade in souls. You see? It's an educational tool as well. I encourage you to write about this too as it will annoy them all which is always endlessly amusing.

“What is the purest form of fear?” he asked.

“I don't know,”

“Oh come now. You've experienced it three times so far.”

“I really have no idea.” I snapped at him but I could hear the whimper in my own voice.

He smiled. “Then I shall show you another one.”

“No wait....”

A flash.

-

I'm on my way.

Not long now. The guards have come for me and I take one last look around my cell. Not to stall them or to keep them away from me but in an effort to say goodbye to the last place that I ever thought of as “mine”.

Because today's the day.

There's only one thing now that's going to keep me from doing the thousand volt dance. That's if the governor decides to change his mind.

There isn't much hope of that though. Never much hope.

Twenty five years I've been waiting for this day. Twenty five years and not a day goes by where I don't think of those poor fuckers that I killed. Twenty five years of answering questions, reading books and writing letters. Always trying to come up with the answer to that most important of questions. Why did I do it? Why did I take those two lives?

I've tried to come up with an answer since I was clean enough to be able to properly take it in. But I can't. I look back at the kid that committed that crime and he seems alien to me. So very different. A product of his time, place and circumstances.

I'm not so far gone as to think that I have anyone to blame but myself. I'm not that naïve. I pulled the trigger. It was my action that sent those brains flying through the air to splatter against the back wall of my uncles garage and I bear the guilt of that every day. The disbelief in the face of the first man followed by the fear of realisation in the face of the second man.

Followed by the relief and relaxation on both faces as they fell backwards.

Or that might have been the last effects of the high that I was on I no longer remember.

I know several things. I know that I pulled the trigger. I know that my best friends older brother put the gun in my hand in return for my last fix. I know that I was conscious enough to check the gun to make sure that it wouldn't misfire or otherwise hurt anyone other than the two pigs that I was killing to pay the man back.

I know that, if I hadn't pulled the trigger then those two cops would have died anyway, probably much harder than the way that I killed them. Then I would have died to, beaten to death with the baseball bat that was being held by my best friend at the ready.

I think back to that time and try to think of a way that I could have done something different. Taken a different path. It's easy with the benefit of hindsight, a word that I've learned since being inside, to say that I could have stayed in school. I could have not smoked that first cigarette that led to that first joint. Even if I'd stopped there and become one of those pot heads I would have probably been ok but I had to listen when my friend passed me a pill and told me that it would make all my troubles go away.

With hindsight I can see that I could have and should have done all of those things. I should have respected my mother and the fact that she was out working three jobs to make sure that we had what little food we had in the house. I should have protected her when she eventually had to turn some tricks to put shoes on my little sisters feet.

But I didn't.

Why not?

Because in that time and in that place it was inconceivable that I should do anything else.

I took the pill because life was unbearable. I hurled abuse at my mother because of the constant rage that I felt. A rage that I didn't understand and had no outlet for and by the time the gun was in my hand, I pulled the trigger because to do anything else was unthinkable.

And now I'm going to die for it.

Unless the governor calls. Which he won't.

I've said I'm sorry even though I know that an apology is not enough. I've written to the widows of those two men that I've killed and I understand that one of them has even found it in her heart to forgive me.

I hope so, because Lord knows I don't forgive myself.

I walk along the corridor outside the cells. The other men are chanting my name. No-one knows how they found out that my time has come but they chant it all the same. It gives me a bit of strength. A bit of courage and right now I'll take all I can get.

I'm bound and shackled although there's no point to the bonds. Where would I go for christ's sake?”

I deserve this.

They take me to the room. It looks like a hospital room. There are medical people all over it waiting for me.

A priest is there and he mumbles the words.

For a moment I want to smack him in his self-righteous mouth.

But I swallow that rage. The same misguided rage that started me on this path all those years ago. Instead I accept the man's prayers. I no longer believe but if it gives him comfort, or the people watching behind the screen comfort then I will take them.

“Do you want to say anything?” I'm asked.

“Hell no,” I try for a laugh but it won't come. “But I will.” I wanted my voice to be strong at this point but it cracks and tears blur my sight.

I turned to the screen.

“I have no excuses.” I tell the watching people, “only explanations but I know that they are not enough. It may seem trite but I am truly, truly sorry. I do not deserve your forgiveness but I hope for it all the same.” I shook my head and again tried for the black humour that had been my shield over the last few days. “This fucking sucks.” I tell them. “I want to thank those that fought for my survival.” My voice cracks at the last word and I swallow the lump in my throat. The warden's looking at his watch and I know that I don't have much time. “And again, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry mama.”

I turn away then. And look at all the tubes and bags of chemicals.

I find my sense of humour after all.

“Jesus Christ.” I hear myself say. “Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to put a bullet through my skull.”

I let them lay me down but find that my body wants to fight them. Some part of me wants them to wait. That my pardon or the reduction of my sentence might be coming down the hall at any moment.

My brain goes down that particular rabbit hole of hope for a moment as they get the drips and things into my arms.

They tell you that it doesn't hurt but I'm shaking in terror as I watch the three men go to the switch board and at the count of three press the buttons that are going to end my life.

It might not hurt but the delay between those buttons being pushed and my loss of consciousness suck.

That's the bit that's cruel and unusual if you ask me. That's the bit where the pain comes.

I wonder if the pain is real or imagined. Whether the poison really is burning through my veins like liquid ice or whether I'm just imagining it.

Either way the pain is real and I jerk against my restraints.

How long now before I die. Is there no way they could speed this up?

A bullet really would be kinder.

Or maybe that's the point.

Fuck this hurts.

As final thoughts go, it's lacking a little something.

I feel myself wanting to giggle despite the pain. They'll probably think I'm a psychopath if I do that though.

Pain.

-

Blackness.

“Well Lord Frederick? Do you have an answer to my riddle?”

I didn't. I was too busy trying to fight of the waves of nausea from the poison that had just been pumped through my veins.

He sighed.

“Well, what more could I expect I suppose? I shall tell you as this game is beginning to get tiresome and I have things to do.

“The purest point of fear. The purest moment of fear happens just before all hope is lost. When you still hope that you might be saved, when you still hops that the medical person or the wheels of justice or just plain circumstances tell you that you will be alright. But then, when the hammer comes down and there's nothing else to be done. Life comes out fighting.

“It's really quite fascinating. But that point of fear. The purest form of fear. Ah....that will see me through centuries.”

He laughed and I could see him again.

“This is why my children demand people's souls as payment. You see, they themselves are afraid. They can picture a time when humanity will no longer need them. Where they will become redundant and so they jealously guard their souls so that they can be, well, farmed for their resources. Farmed for the darkness that souls contain, or farmed for their energy or the lies that they tell themselves without understanding that when life renders them redundant then they will already be dead.

“Not that that's any kind of consolation to the people who have lost their lives and their souls though I suppose.”

I wasn't looking at him.

“So, you ready to get back to it?”

I groaned.

“Good, because I've still got a solid sixteen hours of service that I can drag out of you.”

He snapped his fingers.

-

It's an odd thing to feel your sanity slipping away.

I once heard it said that when a man becomes crazy they actually come to believe that they are the only sane ones and that everyone else are the ones that are going crazy. That wasn't what happened here. I could feel my mind retreating within myself as the lives that I lived melded into each other to the point of rendering me numb.

I found a small dark place and curled myself up into a ball where I couldn't be hurt. I was small, weak and inconsequential as those lives. So many lives flickered out and died before me. I protected myself as well as I could but still the pain and the mind-numbing terror was overwhelming and awful.

I saw so many lives and felt such pain. When I was subject to the vision I was the person or the creature that I was witnessing. Their thoughts were my thoughts and my feelings and actions were their actions and thoughts as though my sense of self, my sense of identity vanished in the fire of that person's existence.

I lost track of them in the end. I can remember and describe maybe the first half dozen of them with significant detail but after that they start to merge together into one huge blob of pain, fear and misery.

I was the animal, waiting in my pen for the slaughter, pissing and shitting myself with fear.

I was the rabbit, caught out in the open air and I hear the scream of the hawk above me.

I was numerous religious martyrs, being brought out to burn before the crowds, my scalp tingling from where they had shaved me wanting to breathe the smoke so that I might die faster but knowing that in that action I would be committing the ultimate sin of self-slaughter and I would be consigned to hell.

I was also numerous people that the holy fire consigned to the flames, watching with hatred as the religious guards openly masturbated as they saw the heat sear my flesh from my bones.

In several cases I was the monster, hiding in my lair when the Witcher came down to end me. I tried to flee from them and tried to protest my innocence but they killed me just the same.

I saw worlds and times that I cannot recognise now to the point that my mind shears of them in the same way that a horse will break off to avoid the jump that is too tall for them. I remember names and places that I have searched for on maps of my own world and I remember things and objects, weapons and items that don't even have a parallel in our world.

I was elf, dwarf, gnome, halfling, animal and creature.

I was the bird soaring between islands over a vast sea, exhausted and knowing that I was dying of starvation but too far gone to turn back and nothing in sight.

I was the sailor, tied to a rack and flogged for a minor offence, torn between the hope that each lash would be the last or that the next lash might kill me.

I was the person trapped in a sinking sea vessel, running out of air and knowing that I will never make it to the surface.

I was the man, lying in bed and losing my mind to dementia and wondering who all these people were that busied themselves around me while the indignities mounted.

I was the woman, trapped inside my own body just wishing that someone would let me die rather than fighting for a life that I no longer wanted.

I was the alcoholic and the drug addict, hoping that maybe this trip, this drink or this fix would be the one that finally ended my path of self-destruction.

I was the parent that watched my child die and found that I could no longer live a life where I had failed that most important life so utterly.

I was the child, chained to a rock, not understanding why this was happening and dying while hoping for a rescue that would never come

It went on and on and on and every time I died I saw darkness and I could hear him laughing.

-

I woke up suddenly. I was lying in my bed in Toussaint although I didn't recognise it at first. I scrabbled backwards as my nostrils were assailed with the smell of sweat, piss, shit and vomit. I was naked and I was strapped to the bed. My throat hurt with a scream that I do not remember giving as I fought against the restraints.

“He's awake,” It was Laurelen that was sat next to me. Her face lined with pain and more than a little bit of suffering. She had been sat in a chair nearby, there was a bowl of water and a sponge inside that I would later find out had been used in an effort to get some kind of liquid inside me. Now that I had control over my own limbs I took hold of the straps and pulled them off myself so I could curl myself into a ball. My hands on the side of my head as if I could hold my brain inside my skull.

It took me a long time to realise that I was in my own body and in control of my own actions.

Laurelen cleaned me with a spell and calmed me with another. I was exhausted and people were coming running. I got the sense of Emma and Mark, I think Kerrass was there but I couldn't swear to it. The smell of Gooseberries meant that Madame Yennefer was also there but I don't remember seeing her.

But I was saying the same thing over and over again.

“It wasn't him. It wasn't Jack. He had nothing to do with it. It wasn't him.”

Someone took hold of me. I don't know who it was but someone levered my hands away from my face and turned my face so that they could look into my eyes. I don't know who it was but I'm pretty sure it was madame Yennefer.

“He didn't know.” I told her. “He didn't know. It wasn't him.”

There was a sharp stabbing pain behind my eyes that I could later identify as my mind being read.

“Sleep now.” I was told, the words echoed with power and they were impossible to resist. But I kept on yelling the same thing over and over.

Jack didn't do it. He had nothing to do with Laughing Jack although he was certainly reaping the benefits. He had nothing to do with the disappearance of my sister.

The entire thing had been a waste of time.

I howled my pain into a pillow until the sleep spell took away my senses.