Ghosts and Memories
The cold muzzle of the gun pressed against the base of his skull. “You should’ve known better, Mole. I’m not that easy to kill.” The voice was as cold as the gun.
The muzzle pressed harder, warming up as it pushed into Mole’s skin. A rookie mistake, Mole thought. What is the point of having a ranged weapon if you’re going to use it to poke people? It would be easy to knock the gun aside with his elbow as he spun around and went for the throat.
That’s how Mole knew that the owner of the cold voice and the gun was as dead as he was supposed to be. The real Bajram Nikolla–warlord, warlock, and the Eagle’s Chosen Champion–would never have made such a mistake. Thus, this was just another ghostly memory playing pranks. Besides–why would a warlock use a gun? Mole sipped his coffee. But his hand shook.
Mole looked around the Kansas diner. It wasn’t packed, but the happily chatting people around him were more interested in each other than a 6 foot 6 Albanian warlock with a two-headed eagle tattoo on his forehead holding a customer at gunpoint. The most likely explanation was that there was no such Albanian warlock standing behind Mole. So the warlock must have died the way Mole remembered, burning and screaming the name of a treacherous god, falling like a comet into the dark waves of the Adriatic.
“No last words? All out of tricks? If you wish to beg, this is the moment,” the voice asked, the coldness yielding place to a lust for suffering. “Very well. Time to die.” The hairs on the back of Mole’s neck rose. He could sense trigger being squeezed.
“More coffee, honey?” It sounded like a young woman. Mole looked to his right and saw a waitress. What memory was this? When had he offended a waitress? Why would he have nightmares about coffee?
Mole’s tongue was quicker than his brain, and answered for him. “Yes, please.” The waitress turned his half-empty cup into a full cup. Mole fired one of his trademark smiles at her and got a very sweet one in return. But when her back was turned, he sniffed the coffee. It smelt like real coffee. It looked like real coffee. He sipped. It tasted like real coffee. It was real coffee. You can never be too sure. It wouldn’t have been the first time he was poisoned. Mole’s shadowy reflection looked up at him from the cup.
Mole paid, tipped generously but not suspiciously so, and stepped into the sunny street of Megiddo, western Kansas. The cup of coffee remained on the table. Nobody paid him any attention. Megiddo may have been a small town, but there were plenty more interesting things to look at than a lean and sandy-haired man in his thirties leaving a diner. Mole figured they might have been more interested if they could have seen the memories he carried with him.
Mole stepped out on a pleasant street, in a pleasant town, in a pleasant part of America. So why did he hear the thunder of artillery and sorcery in the distance? Why did twisted shapes haunt every shadow? Why did he wonder what faraway eyes stared at him through the eyes of the raven on the rooftop? Smoke and shadows. These worries were less than ghosts, less than memories. They were dreams that hadn’t noticed he was awake.
Mole walked away from his visions. But they followed him. Or maybe they already knew where he was going and waited for him there. Mole passed by a playground where what looked like burning children played, oblivious to the fire.
“Why didn’t you save both of them?” a voice behind him asked. The voice belonged to a mother of one, formerly of two.
Mole didn’t bother to turn since he knew there was nothing there. “I wasn’t fast enough,” he answered, as he had the first time.
“Why weren’t you fast enough?”
The buzzing of his smartphone spared Mole the answer. Only one person had his number. And that person held the key to making the memories leave him alone: making new memories.
