Cursed

“Ruth! What in the gods' names are you doing here?”

I was folded like a tablecloth, pinned to the corner of the room. The carpet was a light mocha covered in dust. Silver hairs of lint twirled in the air. Dimming rays of the sun highlighted each one. Thicker than molasses, the air clogged my throat, which was already closing in. Pockets of sweat made my arms glide across my skin. I decided to press down on my teeth rather than biting my tongue. I didn’t know how long I would be trapped in a nightmare like this. Might as well not lose my tongue in the process.

“Marcus, I’m so sorry! She’s coming, Marcus; get out!” My face twisted up like a whirlpool. Eyes that had held back tears and told me to look away were now begging me to look at Marcus fully. What was I to expect? He looked the same every time. He wasn’t truly Marcus, but the makings of a curse that the entity, Ravana, put upon me. The curse of my worst regret played on repeat until I could somehow break out and escape. No one from the outside world could help me. I was superglued to the floor by the power of Ravana’s dark energy, and there was nothing that I could do about it.

After being stuck in a curse for what felt like weeks, my body was hanging onto its last strand. Tears soaked my face, and every time I tried to form words from my mouth, tears fell between my lips like a magnet. Eyelashes were entwined and knotted. Rocks clogged in my throat, and my tongue weighed tons.

“Ruth, go back to the ship, now!”

Stiffly, I shook my head back and forth. “Why did you have to be so stubborn?”

His eyes were golden like Sorin, the sun that lit Ratham City moon after moon. Skin smooth as milk, eyes wide like the cartoons we once watched together, and luminous blonde hair that brushed over his forehead. He rubbed the back of his head, the bottom part shaved, and grabbed my hand. For the 46th time, Marcus always looked the same. His clothes were the same. The way he walked and nearly passed the room that I was hiding in before entering every time was the same. The fear in his eyes was the same. And the constant regret and pain in my eyes were always the same.

I hadn’t talked to him in the last ten times, perhaps? It felt like decades watching him die over and over in front of me. It felt like not warning Marcus was damning him to his death, even though Marcus was already long dead. Out of the corner of my eye, something moved; Ravana’s black slime twitched as it slithered through the cracks of the window. Its body twirled and moved in defiance of gravity’s laws. Slowly, the slime oozed down the wall, building up forcefully against the window as it tarnished the oatmeal-cream rug. As more slime poured through the window, its weight pressed against the glass until it shattered. Shards of glass flew across the room like fireworks. Ravana’s slime gushed through the window with the strength of a fixed sink faucet. It hurled itself onto the floor; the shouts of distant men in the compound knocked at my thoughts. As before, the slime slowly began oozing into the office beneath the entrance door.

The slime from the window fell in a great splat on top of shards of glass, burning anything it came into contact with. The sizzling sound of the slime rang against my eardrums, forcing me to curl up even more at Ravana’s otherworldly weapon. Marcus turned around at the commotion. He looked back at me and hollered at me to get up again. He darted towards the door, but he hadn’t realized that he had stepped directly into the slime that was seeping underneath the door. Marcus, using great strength, tries to pry the door open. Hairs on his arms were raised, silver in the shuddering lights as the compound morphed into chaos. Walls grumbled, floors thundered with footsteps and screams, and the sick humidity of Ratham’s summer day through the broken window clogged my thinking. I shut my eyes and tried to look away. Part of me wished and hoped that Marcus would open the door fully and get past Ravana’s demonic slime. Then somehow, he would return to the real world alive, and I would be broken out of this curse. Gently, my eyes opened. My tears poked fun at my 20/20 vision. The alien substance covered Marcus’ legs, coated his arms, and stole the last muffled breaths from him before his body crumbled to the ground. The sound of his skin searing was like an overcooked egg in a pan of oil.

Snapping my head back like a broken stick, I swallowed immensely and bit my tongue, preparing for the worst of it. Marcus’ shrieks went past my ears and straight to my heart, stabbing me relentlessly. My ears rang from shouts, and my fingers trembled as if I could simply pull the slime off of him as if it were merely a blanket. I tried my best to keep them still and started counting, tripping over my words. One, two, three, four, five, six… Every time I got to eleven, Marcus’ screams were the worst. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen… sixteen was the last hiccup of air that widened his lungs. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one.... Twenty-two was the silence that followed the thump. Then forty-five was Marcus’ body being dragged out by the slime that had engulfed him.

It was time I got the hell out of here.

I felt like I deserved this. Well, I did deserve it. I couldn’t wait to get into the army, help bring down Ravana, and avenge my birth parents. I wish I had waited to join the Army at 10-12, like every other applicant, and not sneak into the Training Facility to get a better idea of what to prepare for in the admissions process. Marcus had been promoted to a position at the facility; I thought that it would be the perfect opportunity for me to get an advantage over the other applicants. I begged for Marcus’ help; knowing my hatred for Ravana, he had created a fake ID for me so I could walk in with him. I wasn’t old enough to join the army, but I needed to learn what new applicants went through. I had to be prepared so that when my class became eligible by age, I would rank above them.

No one was prepared for Ravana to attack the facility, especially a training facility. I was ordered to board an evacuation ship during the attack. Ravana’s slime was a black hole, swallowing everything, slipping through doors, cracks, and ventilators as if it had a mind of its own. Amidst the turmoil, Marcus thought it would be a good idea to go back to his office and get his YL370, a gun that fired electrical bullets, to help rescue those still inside. It could fry the slime, and although flamethrowers could do the trick, Ravana had already gotten them. Nobody knew where the demon was, but her slime was everywhere, and of course, Marcus had to play hero. Marcus never got around to getting the gun because the commander had called him to do another task. Instead of boarding the ship, I took matters into my own hands and dashed into Marcus’ office and looked around for his weapon. That day, I never did find it. Instead, Marcus came looking for me and ended up being killed by Ravana’s slime. Now I witness my worst regret in an infinite loop, tormented by one of Ravana’s demons.

The loop ends after the slime kills Marcus. Everything has to revert to its original state so that this nightmare can play over again. I have nearly five minutes before the scene starts again. Marcus never had the chance to pick up the YL370 from his office. Since nothing goes further than Marcus’ death in this curse, the gun should still be here. Saving Marcus by finding the YL370 may be my only way out of this curse, because it will disrupt the loop if Marcus never dies. Despite this, if I were to save Marcus in this dream-like curse, deep down, I knew that Marcus would always be dead in reality.

Pressing the timer on my watch, I sprinted across the room like a rock from a slingshot. The YL370 was in the locked file cabinet between the door and the window. In Marcus’ office, his bookshelves that stretched to the ceiling were on the opposite end of the room, behind a matching mulberry desk. Two chairs faced the desk, and a small table to the left of the door, accompanied by another chair. Slowly, the glass of the shattered window, as if strung by an invisible piece of string, lifted off the ground and seamlessly became whole again. The damage that Ravana’s slime had done to the furniture and carpet slowly lifted like dark clouds fading after a summer storm. I’ve searched everywhere in this room, and I know exactly where the firearm is: the top drawer in the locked file cabinet. That’s where Marcus’ eyes lingered in the room when he gave it a thought. The question was, where was the damn key?

I’ve looked in all of the drawers, figurines, and even shook books to make sure that it wasn’t in between their pages! Part of me suspected that when the loop resets each time, Ravana moves the key to make it hard for me to break out of her demented curse. Seized with frustration, my veins broiled as I kicked one of the chairs to the ground and threw myself at the desk. I looked at my watch; I had nearly three minutes until I would be sucked into the corner where I originally was. Staring at the time on my watch, I felt anger and a sense of vengeance build in my soul. Perhaps even the demons of Nehpthys would be proud of my animosity, or promises to burn Ravana’s body 47 times as she did to Marcus. Slowly. Agonizing, for the entire Confederation to see. My clock continued to tick; only forty seconds to scavenge before I was to lose another ounce of my soul again.

Leaning up against the desk like a ragdoll, I had the desk inched slightly across the carpet from my weight. Something deep within me snapped that should have happened years ago when I found my biological parents' dead bodies before me in a burning city. I could see the brown clouds of a crumbling city within the deep mahogany of Marcus’ desk. Gritting my teeth, I used my weight to push the heavy desk, fighting against friction as if I could push the memory out of my brain. Ash of Ratham’s demise burned my esophagus as I continued to push the memory across the carpet, letting an agonizing scream as I watched the world sink into hell around me. Slime-coated skyscrapers, burning people, fires raised from hell, and demonic entities being created at Ravana’s whim- all for what? I pressed the backs of my hips against the desk and set my feet on the drawers of the grande bookcase. She let the world burn, and I could not unsee its ashes. I could not get the smell of cooked flesh from my nostrils. My pushing seized, and I slid onto the floor, ready to give up. Preparing to live in this cursed memory forever. To eternally be reminded that I was the reason that Marcus died. A fate far worse than death; yet, I deserved it, hadn’t I?

Suddenly, silver blinds my eyes like a camera shutter. There before me, sunken into the carpet, was a metal key. My heart nearly dropped out of my chest as I held the key in the air to watch it glint in Sorin’s excellence. I slid over the desk, sprinted towards the file cabinet while crashing through the last bits of floating glass, rebuilding itself to the window. The burns of the file cabinet had nearly lifted. I glanced at my watch. Shit. 8 seconds. I slipped the key into the top drawer of the cabinet and tugged it open. It wouldn’t give. Sucking in my teeth, I turned the key again and tugged with my full weight. Powerfully, the drawer burst open. Stumbling back, the only thing that caught my attention like gold was the YL370. I reached out to grab it, but suddenly, I could feel Ravana’s magic pulling me backward into the corner that she always confined me to. Fighting the demon’s strength, my left hand reached for the gun, brushing against its honey-yellow exterior. The weapon fell out of the cabinet as I slid across the carpet. My fingers grabbed onto every fiber of the carpet to knock the YL370 into my grasp. With one more jolt, I managed to grab the gun's handle. With a strenuous pull of Ravana’s dark magic, I crashed back into where I originally sat at the beginning of every loop.

The 47th time of seeing Marcus started the same as any other. The dust bunnies that colonized the air, the muffled and distant voices of soldiers and workers in the facility, and how it was supposed to be summertime, but it felt like the polar opposite in this room. The door slams open, and there, of course, is Marcus, coming to repeat the only lines he had ever said at this moment.

“Ruth! What in the gods' names are you doing here?”

“Marcus, get down!”

“Ruth, you need to get on the-”

“I said get down!”

I pulled out my gun and aimed it at the window. Confused, Marcus got down to my position. His broad shoulders hung over his body. He tried to gaze into my eyes, but I kept staring ahead. I couldn’t look at his ghost. If I didn’t get this right, the gun would go back to the file cabinet, and Ravana would surely take back the key. Who knows if the key would be in the same place again! I kept my eyes staring straight at the window. The murky thunderclouds swirled in the air outside the windows like melted marshmallows and hot chocolate.

“Ruth, are you alright?” It came out as a soothing, hushed whisper. A question that rarely anyone had asked me, but Marcus always looked beyond my hardened surface.

“Move beside me.” I flicked my gun to the right of me; he did just as he was told. Slime began to build up at the window, already seeping through the cracks, tarnishing the carpet that was once the cream of Marcus’ daily coffees.

“Ruth, you need to board the ship. I thought you were already on!”

“Shut up, Marcus.”

At the moment, as expected, slime percolated from the window in great quantities. I unleashed the gun’s bullets onto Ravana’s slime as her powers latched onto my body like ropes, holding me to the floor so that I could not stand or move. The electric bullets attacked the slime, burning parts of it to a crisp. As if a wounded animal, the slime retreated through the glass, as if to rebuild itself.

“The hell! Ruth? How did you-”

My bullets cut Marcus’s shouts off. There, I shot at the slime at the door that had killed him time and time again. It retrieved, just as the other mass of it had. Letting the gun fall from my fingers, a light numbness overtook my being. Ravana’s magic that had fastened me to the room’s corner faded away, allowing for my legs, back and arms to stretch free. Immediately, I whipped to embrace Marcus. He’s not real, I kept screaming to myself. You idiot, he’s not real! Though my tears were real, sinking into his not-real shirt. His not-so-real face was stunned, but he embraced me anyway. Never turned down a hug from his little sister, just like the real Marcus had.

“I love you so much.” I didn’t know if he even understood the muffled words buried within his army jacket or the saddened hiccups uncontrollably ripping out of me. I closed my eyes for only a few seconds. Memories before the attack flickered like a digital camera. The laughter we had shared, Marcus scolding me to stop spinning around in his chair, or me analyzing the various criteria that the applicants were going through before sneaking out into the halls to get a good glimpse of the action. All to avenge someone already dead, only to kill another.

“I love you too, Ruth.” Opening my eyes, I could only see a blurry version of Marcus- concerned, confused- but relieved. “Now, we’ve got to get on the ship.” Rubbing the tears out of my eyes, my vision ceased to clear. His outline was a bright light that slowly spread throughout the room. I beat the demon’s curse, had I not?

I stumbled backward from Marcus’ embrace, who now had fully disappeared in a sea of pure white. Heaving, my lungs flared with heartbreak. “Marcus! Come back!” My posture fell apart like a thrift store sweater. “I’m sorry.”

As the room sank into a white void, I ran towards the entrance door of the office, aggressively moving the handle back and forth. It was no use; Ravana sealed the door. The unnatural light buried my legs in a sea of white. The room, the facility, the world around me faded into a blank sky. Wiping aside the last tears on my cheeks, I buttoned my eyes closed and counted to ten.

If this was death, and the last person I had seen was Marcus, then so be it. I could die satisfied with that.