It took T'balt a long time to stand up from his chair. For an hour, he just held his head in his hand. Unable to shake that cold image from his mind. He just kept seeing her face over and over and over and over again. Chosa dead. Though his mind knew it was over now, the rest of him was stuck in that moment. He felt like he would never leave it.
No matter how many times he threw cold water in his face or drowned himself in a bottle of beer. He couldn't shake the fact that it was real. What if it happened again? What if it happened in every one of his lives? What if he couldn't stop it? Even though he had died over thirty times, he couldn't do anything to stop it.
Those demons. Angels. Cruxes of the apocalypse. There was nothing to stop them from coming. No matter how many times he revived, he couldn't stop the end from coming. How could someone like him protect her? He was weak. He wasted his life alone in his room, and this was him suffering the consequences for it.
"Hello."
"Chosa here." She answered the phone in that sweet, enthusiastic way she always did. "Hi Tibby, what's up?"
"Nothing. I just wanted… to hear your voice."
"You feeling okay?" She heard the despair in his voice. It was the voice of tragedy, more than the usual low self-loathing T'balt sometimes went through.
"I just… Never realized how much I needed you."
"Have you been drinking again?"
"No… No… I just needed to know you were okay."
Then, without warning, he hung up the phone. That was stupid. But he supposed things like that didn't matter. She wouldn't care once the clock hit noon and things went to hell again. He couldn't help but wonder if this was how things would be for all eternity, dying and coming back like this, while still remembering the pain.
He took another drink, his grandfather's gun sitting on the kitchen counter.
After a couple more beers, a knock came from the front door. He groaned. He didn't want Chosa to see him all depressed. Namely, because he couldn't explain to her why. Even if he tried to pass it off as a dream, she would still think that he was crazy for being mentally distraught over a dream.
He tried to rub some sense into his face. The knock came again. "What did you lose your key?" he slurred. Knock, knock, knock.
He groaned and stumbled over to the door, unlocked it, and pulled it open. But the face he saw immediately sent him tumbling into fear. He fell to the floor, pushing himself away, shielding himself like he was in front of a firing squad.
A heavy boot stepped in his doorway. "Welcome back to the living." Monan smiled.
"Get away! Leave me alone!"
"Hey, hey. No need to get all fussy. Is this any way to greet a friend? It's been a lifetime since we've seen each other, T."
T'Balt scrambled away, knowing he had no means to defend himself. He could still feel the man's boot crushing his throat. His only instinct was to run.
How the man was here, he hadn't the slightest clue. All he could do was grab his grandfather's gun and cling to it for life like he had done so many times already.
"Stay back!"
"Wow. A gun. Someone needs to chill out. The fun isn't supposed to start till later, you know." Despite the words, Monan didn't even slightly flinch at the sight of a pistol aimed straight at his head. It was shaky, swaying a little too much. "Or maybe you've started the party early." Monan gestured at the empty beer bottles in the kitchen, but T'balt didn't sway his gaze.
"You murdered me. You caused Chosa and the kid to die," he spat.
"Oh, is that what this is about? Some people are so petite. Fine. You get one. Go ahead." Monan stepped closer. "Pull the trigger."
"You… want to die?"
Monan broke into hysterics at the word. "Die?... You don't even know the meaning of the word. They used to say a man can't know what it means to die until he's already dead. But you've lost the privilege to even think of death. You've already reached the other side, my friend. This is the forever torment, the eternal hell. And you are stuck here. Forever."
"Stop… Don't come any closer."
Monan's heavy boots continued to thump towards him. "Come on. Let me show you what happens when we die. Or do you need me to teach you how to kill? Is that why you're so shit at this? Too scared to pull the trigger when it really counts," he taunted, raising his voice louder and louder.
"Shut up! Shut up! Or I'll shoot."
"Then let me help you, tough guy." Monan grabbed the head of the pistol and pulled it between his eyes, staring one eye down the barrel and the other into the fear in the eyes of the man holding it.
T'balt's hand inched off the trigger. The man was insane. Or was he that confident that T'balt wouldn't pull the trigger? Was he playing right into his game? He tried to retreat, but as soon as he did, Monan seized his hands and forced the gun back to his head. "I SAID PULL IT, YOU MORON. YOU WEAKLING! YOU TRASH EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BE—" He was cut off by the crack of gunfire.
When he was yelling, he had a hold of T'balt's hand, squeezing harder and harder until the hand on the gun was breaking from the pressure. T'balt tried to free himself. But the man was jumping in excitement and then… he was dead on the floor.
The crimson spray blasted the curtains, and T'balt was left with the gun in his hands. It was the scene of a murder, and he was the killer. He was stuck, frozen, unable to process anything that had happened. The only question jamming into his brain was when did things get so impossible to understand? He felt lost, seemingly unable to shake the smell of death and blood.
Chosa was out with a group of friends, well, acquaintances. They'd met at a bar to celebrate a hard night's work on their end-of-the-year project. They had to write a story for a national publication about an influx of underground conspiracies circling around the city. They had interviews with all sorts of strange dopes and hooligans, who they were sure were on drugs.
The drinks were flowing in, and Chosa had ridden with a friend so she could partake if she wanted. But tonight she wasn't feeling like it much to the dismay of her group, especially the guys. She had denied so many calls for "Just one drink" that she was sure she would've had alcohol poisoning if she accepted all of them.
But she kept thinking about that phone call from T'balt. She couldn't shake the feeling that something serious had happened. Something was not okay. So she ended up borrowing her friend's car and rushing home early. To her surprise, when she got there, the front door was already open.
And just inside was T'balt, gun in his hands and a dead body on the floor. Her chest dropped, unable to say a single word. It was pure horror what she was seeing. She didn't know the man, but T'balt's eyes said that this was not a stranger.
"I.. I.. I.." He couldn't squeeze out any words.
But Chosa wanted no part. She felt unsafe. She had to leave and get as far away from the portrait as possible. Though T'balt couldn't understand why she left, why she didn't even say a single word to him. Why did she look at him with such mistrust? Why that, when all he wanted to do was hug her and hold her? Why did she run away? But before he could call after her….
"You died."
He was back in his living room, hands holding only a gaming controller, house empty of anyone but him.
"No, I didn't," he said at the screen. At least he didn't remember dying. And he usually always remembered dying. It was the most visceral part of each of his lives. So how come he was reset?
Just when he thought he'd figured out the conditions of this little power of his, it formed some new rules. Maybe… Did Monan know this would happen? Was that why he was so eager to die? That's when he realized something he should've known the moment he laid eyes on the man. How he kept mentioning the term Redeemer. How he already seemed to know exactly how the power worked.
"I'm so stupid… He's the same as me. It reset because he died."
The thought filled him with relief and terror at the same time. Another person like him. He wasn't the only one who remembered whenever everything was reset. The feeling filled him with equal amounts of relief and terror. T'balt still remembered what happened to Chosa. How he let her die. He was a like-kind but a maniac.
"Let your guard down, dumbass."
T'balt turned at the sound of the voice, but it was too late. Monan's arms scooped deep under his neck and squeezed until T'balt couldn't see anymore. And he slipped into unconsciousness.