Ghosted

            

            The enemy was close. They would probably attack just before dawn, when the minds of the marines and soldiers in the encampment were most weary. Justin watched the shadowy wood-line. He knew they were out there. They were probably watching him now, letting the tense calm eat away at his nerves. He preferred violence to stillness. His thoughts would sour in the long gaps between fighting.  

Justin hated the men in the woods. The Alliance troops called them slinks, because of their sneakiness and cowardice. He hated them because their ways confused him. Their ways confused everybody. The slinks never engaged in open warfare. They couldn’t, because they didn’t possess the technology that the Alliance marines did. The slinks had simple weapons: clubs, poison, and of course fire.

By any rational assessment, the slinks should have been defeated long ago, in the face of the Alliance’s superior numbers and technology. But they hadn’t been defeated. In fact, the slinks were destroying the Alliance piece by piece.

Justin squeezed his carbine pulse rifle. The handguard bit into his skin. He liked the sting of it, because pain kept him awake during the dark watches. On very long nights, Justin would sometimes bring a blade up into the watchtower with him. He’d press the blade to his hand until his mind was fully alert. His wakefulness kept the camp safe.

The young man sighed as he flitted his goggles between night vision and thermal vision. All he could see past the first few trees was a white haze and some indistinct movement. The slinks often melted a kind of fibrous plastic, the fumes of which masked their bodies from night vision and heat seeking tech.

“Hey Woodward, you’re relieved,” the Corporal of the Guard said as he stepped up into the hut atop the watch tower. The watch relief followed closely behind the corporal.

“How’s it looking?” the corporal asked. He was a thick man with a very direct gaze.

“The slinks are waiting…like always,” Justin said. He slipped past the corporal as the watch relief took his post. Justin was much thinner and younger than the corporal, looking rather boyish for a marine.

“Alright. Well try to get some rest,” the corporal said.

Justin didn’t think he’d be able to. The camp’s bedding was seldom generous enough to gift him with sleep.

His bowels growled. He nodded toward the corporal, too tired to give the proper “Aye Corporal.”  He descended the watch tower and began to trudge back the center of camp.

“Woodward!” the corporal called again to Justin by surname.

“Yes, corporal,” Justin stood smartly.

The corporal shook his head and just said, “Try not to get ghosted, man.”

Justin nodded again, “You too.”

He resumed his short journey back into the camp and emptied his bowels in one of the camp’s makeshift relief stations. He thought about trying to sleep. He was exhausted, but that was no guarantee he’d be able to sleep.

Instead, Justin made his way to the golden temple in the center of the camp. The golden temples were the Alliance members places of worship and ritual. Back home, these temples truly were golden. But here on the battle-front, they were little more than stone enclaves with religious adornments inside. Every camp was assigned a temple and two holy shepherds, one shepherd to watch the troops by day and one by night.

The night father was Ser Eli. The day mother was Ser Mara.

Ser Eli waited at the doorway, as though he were expecting Justin to arrive.

“Eli”, Justin said in greeting. He didn’t care for ceremony.

“How fairs your person tonight, Justin?” the shepherd asked.

“I’m tired but resolved.”

“And…how fairs your faith tonight?”

Justin bowed his head a little. “Rather defeated,” he admitted.

The shepherd nodded and said, “Please do come in?”

Justin locked his rifle in the safe near the doorway and entered the temple.

They sat, and Ser Eli began warmly, “What’s bothering you tonight?”

Ser Eli had kind eyes, a bald head, and a gold-colored robe. Justin had found him to be a good listener, even when he didn’t have all the answers.

Justin shook his head, “I feel like this war is absurd.”

“Absurd?” the shepherd asked.

“Yes, how are they winning, Eli?” Justin asked. “The Alliance has every conceivable advantage. You couldn’t wish for a better military. And yet, the slinks continue to take ground, camp by camp. Is the Creator against us?”

Ser Eli didn’t say anything at first. He took his customary pause.

“Our battle is not against flesh and blood,” the shepherd said at last.

“It feels like it is,” Justin said.

“That’s the trick, isn’t it?” Ser Eli put his finger in the air as he spoke. “We measure our losses in physical destruction, but…our enemy has found a way to defeat us mentally and spiritually. That’s the true battle. The battle of belief. Let me ask you this, Justin. What are you most afraid of?”

Justin shivered as he spoke. “I don’t want to get ghosted.”

“Yes, exactly,” the shepherd said. “We once fought with honor, knowing that death in battle only brought us into the afterlife, with the Creator. Armed with this belief, the Alliance was unstoppable. I remember the days when the Alliance marines tore through enemy lines without fear of death, and with the bold knowledge that being slain was no punishment.”

“Then, the slinks came,” Justin shuddered.

“Yes,” Ser Eli agreed.

“Well, why doesn’t the church preach against their claims, Eli!?” Justin blurted. “You could, you know! If you just told us that the slinks aren’t really capable of turning us into ghosts, we could regain our strength. We would fight with the honor we used to have in battle!”

“A practical lie? Is that what you’d like?” Ser Eli asked.

Justin shook his head, “I just…I wish I believed something other than what I do. I wish I didn’t believe the slinks could turn me into a ghost, to walk the earth forever in agony.”

The shepherd nodded.

“And!” Justin continued, “Even if the slinks are lying. Even if everything they taught us about the ghostings and their ability to stop us from entering the afterlife is false. I can’t…convince myself of it. It’s all I think about when they come to fight us. I wish…I wish I could choose what I believe.”

The shepherd nodded. “It is appointed for each man once to die. And after that, to face the judgement,” Shepherd Eli quoted. “Do you believe that, Justin?”

“Yes,” Justin nodded, “and still…I know what I’ve seen. I can’t deny my own experience.”

“What our enemy does is certainly an abomination,” the shepherd admitted.

 “Do they really commune with the devil?”

To this the Shepherd waved a hand and said, “They don’t need the devil to do what they do. It’s much simpler. They use pain to disrupt our path to the afterlife.”

“That does sound so simple,” Justin said.

“Indeed, pain connects us to the physical world like nothing else. Pain, in a very real way, tethers you to the earth. When a person dies as they should, peacefully, their consciousness leaves their body smoothly, like a snake shedding it’s skin. But…the more painful the death, the greater the chance a piece of you gets left behind on this physical plane.”

“That’s why the slinks burn people alive?” Justin asked, “In the hopes that the pain will tether part of the person’s consciousness to this dimension?”

“The ancient ritual was fire, yes. But now, of course, they use the Elusian poison. They claim it’s more reliable,” the shepherd said.

Justin bit his lip and said, “Watching that poison kill, it’s the most horrible thing.”

The Shepherd’s expression became somber.

Justin continued after a pause, “they say Elusian poison is the most painful experience known to us. But when it kills, it looks…different than I ever expected. They don’t scream, Eli. No, no one ever screams when they get infected. They just…freeze. They go rigid. You wouldn’t even know they’re in pain, except for…their face. Ugh! That face! I see it in my dreams. It scares me more than the carnage. It scares me more than anything. They just sit there with that expression on their face until their bodies give out.”

Justin took a moment to clear his throat, then continued. “How can we fight against an enemy that will doom us to a shell of an existence? They’ve taken away heaven. They’ve taken away Valhalla. There’s no glory to be found in death.”

The shepherd bent forward and put his hand on Justin’s shoulder.
                “Scripture only gives us hints, but I believe that the Creator always builds a way,” the shepherd said.

“A way through that hell of an existence?” Justin asked.

“Yes, given time.”

“How much time?”

The Shepherd leaned back and said, “I don’t know. I imagine time works quite differently when you don’t have a body. It would be hard to place yourself in time or space without one.”

Justin shrugged, “I wish I knew more of these things.”

“The shepherds are searching for answers as well. All things will be revealed in time.” Eli said.  

“That’s not exactly the type of message that would rally the troops though, is it?” Justin asked.

“No, it…doesn’t seem to be.” Ser Eli shook his head.

Justin thanked the shepherd. His mind wasn’t at ease. It probably never would be as long as this bloody war continued. But the opportunity to express his doubts always alleviated some of their pressure.

The marine retrieved his rifle and made his way back to his bunk.

Most of the soldiers and marines were sleeping when he entered the bivouac shelter. He tried not to wake his bunkmate, Private Jones, as he sat down on the thin mattress of the lower bunk. But Jones stirred anyhow. All the marines were light sleepers this late into the war.

“Hey Woodward,” came a sleepy tone.

“Hey Jones,” Justin said.

“Is it third watch yet?” Jones asked.

“Nah man, you have a couple more hours.”

At this, Jones nodded and turned over. As he did so, he offered, “Alright Woodard. Try not to get ghosted tonight.”

“You too, mate,” Justin said.

Justin slung his rifle and lay his weary body to rest, still fully clothed.

Then Justin closed his eyes.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Perhaps four hours. Perhaps four minutes. His body was too tired to accurately assess time.

All he knew was that the base sirens were blaring when he awoke, and marines were scattering.

Because he typically slept in his boots, Justin simply rolled out of his bunk and unslung his rifle.

He saw panic in the eyes of his fellow platoon mates. Then he smelled the smoke.

Dark clouds wafted in from every exit in the bivouac shelter. Then fire began to leak inside, like water, crawling along the barracks floor. The fire seemed alive. It slithered towards its retreating prey.

Justin was struck from behind and thrown to the ground. A soldier, completely engulfed in flame howled and dashed across the bay of panicked warriors. Platoon members cleared a path, to avoid catching the flame themselves. Several tore through their packs in desperate attempts to find their extinguishing kits.

Justin smelled the fumes of burnt hamburger and heard the increasing shouts of warriors doing their best to put out the flames. The efforts of the warriors were far from sufficient, and the fire grew inside the building at an astounding rate.

Justin’s bunk mate helped him to his feet and shouted something. Justin couldn’t make out it was.

He glanced over to the far wall of the barracks and saw the Corporal of the Guard organizing a firing squad. Four marines unloaded their weapons into the side of the barracks shelter. Pulses melted through the siding. They were making their own doorway out of the doomed shelter.

Once the wall had been sufficiently weakened, the corporal charged forward and threw a heavy kick. The siding gave way, and immediately flames spilled inside and ignited the corporal’s boots and pants.

The slinks had covered the entire shelter in a skin of fire. There was no escape.

Through the opening in the shelter wall, Justin saw the outline of a tall man in a goat’s head mask. The black horns stood out in stark contrast to the orange flames dancing in front of him.

“Slink!” Justin shouted as he raised his rifle. He could barely hear his own voice.

The room erupted with gunfire as every marine and soldier trained their weapon on the lone enemy and engaged.

One hundred carbine pulses later, the lone slink had been reduced to a slushy pile of ground meat.

But the platoon had all been a half-second too late. A canister tumbled through the opening in the shelter and released a fine white smoke.

The canister came to rest at Justin’s feet. He was the first to be infected, but Elusian poison was potent enough to infect everyone in the building within two minutes.

All the other platoon members scurried away from the mist. But not Justin. There was no point now. He’d already smelt it, and that meant it was too late.

The rumors were true. Elusian poison smelled like pungent flowers: lilacs.

Justin turned his gun toward his face, swallowed the barrel, and tried to pull the trigger.

Once again, he was half a second too late. He lost all control of his bodily movement immediately. His limbs froze and he toppled to the ground, not lucky enough to crack his skull on the concrete below.

Then the pain started, and Justin understood why people infected with the poison never cried out. Effort, any effort at all, was impossible under the weight of such overwhelming pain.

Every part of him hurt more than any part of him had ever hurt before. A living anguish touched every inch of his body at once. His head, brain, skin, muscles, bones and internal organs all boiled.

Awareness retreated from his mind, and the pain became the center of his world. It became more real than him. He began to question his own existence, but the existence of the pain could not be denied.  

Time too retreated in the face of the agony.

Justin boiled for a hundred years. Then he looked and saw the flames from the barracks fire approached him. They still had not touched his body.

Justin boiled for another hundred years. His mind became heavy with the weariness of old age. He looked again and found that the flames burned at his clothes and body. The fire enveloped and barbequed his flesh, but the pain of the fire simply blended into the pain of the poison’s scorching toxins. The pain of the fire was no different from the pain of the poison. Both were unbearable.

Most of Justin’s mind began to untether.

Justin boiled and burned for another hundred years. The pain never relinquished for a moment. It skewed his senses, made it difficult to see clearly or identify where he was.

At last, when Justin no longer recognized anything about him any longer, he found that he could move once again.

He found that he could scream, and scream he did. He tried to cry the pain away, and it worked, only a little.

The briefest respite from the boiling of his flesh became his only aim.

And so, he continued. Justin screamed at the landscape, which now stood, devoid of any shelter, marines, or slinks. Everyone was gone. What had happened to them? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the pain.

Justin stood in the rubble of a long abandoned military base and cried for death to find him.

“I imagine time works quite differently when you don’t have a body,” Ser Eli’s words found Justin in this new shadow reality of pain and loneliness.

“No! No! No! No!” Justin cried out for hours, and then for days, and then for years. He had no throat to grow sore and no lungs to damage from the dreadful screams. But though he had no physical body, he still burned. The pain refused to leave. Only his hollers made the pain recede, ever so slightly.

“Did you hear that?” an unexpected voice said.

Justin looked and saw children playing in the ruins of old military base. He recognized them, not their faces. He couldn’t see their faces. But they possessed an essence that he recognized.

“Slinks! Slink children!” he shouted. He hated them. Their ancestors had brought him this pain.

He charged at them with a war cry. The air did not slow him. Movement was like blinking. At once he was upon the children. He tried to grab one boy by the arm, but it was difficult. Justin reached out with anger and pain, rather than with hands, and the boy felt it.

The boy recoiled his arm and screamed. The children ran away.

Overwhelming pain overtook Justin’s awareness for a space, and he lost track of his place in time.

“Over here, near the wood-line,” a voice spoke. Justin looked. Some men with construction equipment milled about the camp ruins.

“Out!” Justin screamed, his voice fueled by the pain and anger that now centered his reality.

The men were terrified. Some ran. Some froze.

Justin threw his anger and pain at a pile of bricks near the men. The bricks slammed violently into the earth, narrowly missing the foreman. The workers dashed away in fear, and Justin felt it.

Their fear gave Justin something rich to feed upon. Fear gave Justin far more sustenance than anger or pain. He gave chase to the men but found that his strength began to dissipate if he ventured too far. Out there, beyond the trees, the slink offspring might be able to challenge him. And he needed to take revenge upon them.

He crawled back to his death site, back to the pain and anger. These were what he knew. He was pain, he was anger. Without them, would there be anything left? He feared there wouldn’t be. His friends had died the same way as he, but he couldn’t see them. Where were they? He doubted they were real, and so he doubted he was real.

He knew only that pain, anger, and fear, they were real. Their existence was undeniable.

The slinks had murdered him and his friends, and now their offspring tried to reap the rewards of their sin. They would pay.

Justin waited for more victims, whose fear he could feed upon. He held his tether, and he became one with the anguish for a space.

“This place feels wrong,” a new voice allowed the lingering entity to anchor himself in the blur of time.

A lone hiker walked through the barren field. The old military camp was long buried.

The lingering entity didn’t know if the hiker had said those words or thought them. He didn’t care.

He howled, and the hiker froze. The lingering entity felt the fear leaking from the hiker’s body. Her fear was his sustenance, and it had been so long since his last feast.

He laughed, and she heard it. More fear, more power.

He charged back and forth, in the dancing shadows of the night.

The hiker screamed, and the entity laughed.

He didn’t recognize her essence. He didn’t care. His pain was too intense for him to exercise discretion.

“Run, run, run!” he shouted.

She did run.

The lingering entity blinked past her and stood in her path.

The hiker twisted her ankle in an attempt to turn away from the apparition too quickly.

The entity laughed again.

But he began to feel tired too. The effort had drained him. He receded back into his pool of pain, anger, and fear.

“It’s haunted I tell ya! I’ve seen things here you wouldn’t believe.” A voice roused him again.

Where once there was a field, a house now stood. It was a new house, and a small family lived inside. A young man pointed towards the front door and said, “I ain’t staying here no more.”

The entity tried to remember himself. Where was he? When was he? Remembering took too much effort. He knew himself only as the center which connected pain, anger and fear. He was the nexus of anguish.

The nexus hated the family which lived in the house. He didn’t know why he hated them, but he knew he simply had to drive them out or drive them to madness. They had no right to occupy this place.

Their constant voices pulled the nexus into moments of time where he could terrorize them.

Anguish was all the nexus knew, and so it was all that he could deliver. The family grew more and more frightened night by night. If only they would leave, the nexus would dissipate until he was roused again. But they didn’t leave. They were a proud family.

The nexus ate their pain, anger, and fear. He ate their anguish, and he became stronger every night. When well fed, he could move physical objects with ease. He slammed their doors shut in the middle of the night, dropped kitchen knives onto the floor near their feet, and shut off their machines. Perhaps he may have garnered the strength to toss one down a set of stairs. That’s what he hoped for.

“Who are you?” a final voice spoke.

The nexus moved to the man who had asked him.

A man with wise eyes, thick gray hair, and a golden cloak sat at the kitchen table in the family’s house. Some small part of the man’s essence was familiar to the nexus, but the nexus could not recall why.

“Leave!” the nexus shouted at the man in gold.

“Who are you?” the man asked once more.

The nexus pulled back. The man in the golden cloak wasn’t afraid of him, and without fear, the nexus could not feed.

The nexus howled and receded back into his sea of misery.

“I ask again, who are you?” With these words, the man in the golden cloak pulled the nexus back into the same moment once again.

“Leave me!” The nexus shouted.

The man did not react.

The nexus drew anger, and he used it to pick up the kitchen table. He slammed it back down into the floor. The room shook.

The man in the golden robe did not react.

The nexus was tired. Lifting the table had cost him nearly all his energy.

“Who are you?” the man said repeated.

“I…anguish!” the nexus shouted.

“Let your anguish go,” said the man in the golden cloak said.

“I…am anguish!” the nexus responded.

“You’re not,” said the man. “You’ve stayed upon this earth long past your time. It is appointed for each man once to die. And after that, to face the judgement. This is unnatural. You must let go.”

The nexus felt the weight of the pain, anger, and fear he carried. Each one was a sea unto itself. The nexus was just the point at which they all converged.

The nexus exerted the last of it’s strength in a bloodcurdling cry.

“You’re the last,” the man in the golden cloak said. “Pass on with the others. Face your final judgement.”

“Tell…me.” The nexus whispered.

The man pointed, and said, “You need only leave this place and not return. Your pain chains you here. Sever your connection and pass on to your final judgment.”

The nexus took flight.

The journey was long, because the nexus felt every inch of it. He pushed himself to the boundary of his domain, to the point where he felt his power start to fade.

He couldn’t do this, could he?

This place granted him power. Without it, he had nothing. Without it, perhaps he was nothing.

The nexus thought about staying, but the man in the golden cloak would remain if he did. There was no other option. Nothing remained for him in this place.

The nexus continued on.

It’s power faded. But so too did his anguish.

After a while, the journey became easier with each passing length.

The fear soon dissipated, and the nexus pressed forward with greater confidence.

Then the anger faded, and he found himself regretting the pain of his victims.   

Finally, the pain subsided. The burning, which had scorched him for countless lifetimes, went cold.

The anguish broke away, and the small piece at the center found himself once more.

Justin was all that remained. Justin was all that passed on.