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Short Fiction
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Ehena's Silent Lunch ( Uploaded Fairy Side Story )
A prequel before the main light novel.
"Mes nom es Ehena, et je suis moite Francais." It was one of those classroom introductions, that left students not sure what the other half was. Even when US society moved past discrimination, the way some students introduce themselves makes you wonder we do ourselves any favors. And I was no exception.
"So what's the other half?" anoher student said.
"I'm a Hafu, what would you think?"
Although in retrospect, my name would not have been an indicator, as my last name was Marie. My father, a Frenchmen was extremely traditional to a fault. And this included things like having my mom change her last name to be in accordance with the name of mes pere. Although all this was for naught now, but I'm cutting ahead of myself.
I am currently seventeen, although my family had moved from France back when I was thirteen. The first think people notice about me is my height, which is on the taller side of short. Which puts me almost as tall as a short male, despite being non transgendered. This is in contrast with my girlfriend, Hemato-Tomato, whom presents female, in as much as a tomboy with an overgrown bob that's dyed black can do so.
When we had started dating, I wasn't sure if she liked me as a person, or liked me for my footwear choices. To me specific, while most girls would wear high heels, I would be wearing ripped blue skinny jeans and Birkenstock Boston clogs. This had previously not been an issue in other schools I went to, but for whatever reason I often notice her starring at my shoes. But so far she hadn't acted out in anyway, despite how nervous she makes me feel. Although sometimes on formal occasions, my father would make me wear 1950s dresses, when I would rather go hiking in quarries. But would always stick it him but wearing my wood colored steel toe boots. And after mom died, as long as I did the minimum, he was never otherwise super pushy.
But that boils down my personality; I am conformist for the most part, except for some features where I try to make it obvious I'm not going to dance to other people's pop music. Like someone sitting along in a dark alleyway outside the soda fountain near the bookstore.
To think that it took meeting a deviant to break me out of my own routine.
Even if she seems she liked my slender goose neck over other aspects of my body.
It was another day of silent lunch, when I would regular sit with my girlfriend Hemato-Tomato. Normally she would ord two pizza, a hamburger without toppings besides cheese, and one bottle of water. Yet she never seemed to consume carbonated drinks. I was mostly the same way, except that sometimes I might bring a thermos of hot tea, to have along with my bento box.
It had been several weeks sense we had to have “silent lunch”, a form of punishment for the entire classroom, where the one mistake for one student would have ramifications for the life of all the rest of the students. Those who bring this silence would never be seen again.
There was one girl that broke this silence, and security guard jerked her by the neck, and took away from the cafeteria. The room that they would be taken off to was mysteriously called “Salle De Mort.” So far I’ve been lucky, as me and Hemato only exchange whispers.
But sometimes I wonder, what if it ends up the next day I end up being snatched, and how would my girlfriend feel about me being gone? I’m not sure I want to know what’s in “Salle De Mort”.
The halls of death.
The halls where none return from.
After I returned to school the next morning, the girl that disappeared into “Salle De Mort” never to class. I had just assumed that she was having a sick day, until I was invited outside by my girlfriend Hemato, the tomato.
“Hey I have something to show you.” Hemato said.
“I’m not sure if I really want to know.” I responded.
“It’s not bad, I promise. It kind of smells nice.”
I go over, and look inside the bag. There, to my horror, was the severed head of the girl that never returned to class.
“Hemato, how do you get this? You should put it back.”
“Can you promise to keep a secret?”
“I can try my best, can’t make...”
“I woke as assistant executioner for my dad.”
“So where ‘Salle De Mort’ go?”
“That’s where students who violated code of silence in the...”
“I thought they stopped doing that in 81 in my home country?”
“Times have changed a bit sense then.”
I try to convince myself that this was some sort of practical joke, that Hemato was not really holding the severed head of one of my classmates, and that she didn’t really work as an executioner in “Salle De Mort”.
“So how did you get to work in that room?”
“I don’t, I’m a friend of the kid that does. I work for the government.”
“Then how did you get that?”
“You think I got around digging up graves? I was able to bribe him into letting me have it, sense they were just going to cremate her body anyway.”
“And why do you keep them?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you. And I want you badly.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about Hemato-Tomato. I wasn’t sure if she was even telling the truth, and I wasn’t sure why death somehow the justified punishment for those whom broke the “code of silence”.
The silence in the school had been something implemented for off and on for a long time, but it never occurred to me that there would be deadly implications for principles pursuit of “justice”, if you can ever call it that.
And now, here I was, dating someone, with no idea what her real interests are in.
Am I somehow merely a severed head to her?
It was one of those school days, where you’re never really quite sure how to respond to your girlfriend, when she says something that’s disturbing. Do enough complaining, and eventually undo attention will be drawn to yourself.
“Have you ever smelled it Ehena?” Hemato asked.
“Smell what?” I responded.
It was midnight, I heard the closet door creak. I thought I had killed that bastard. But it became quickly apparent that what I was dealing with some something not quite human, and yet not quite beast. I went to go check the halls, as he was still lying on the floor in a bloody mess, which I had to clean up. It was something I didn’t want Hemato-Tomato to know about me, so when with would have lunch together, I would just tell her that I would prefer not to talk about my family.
When I went to go back to bed I heard a voice.
“Ehena, I know what you have done.” the voice said. It’s voice matching an altogether different form of resonance than what would pass for humans.
“Who are you, hiding in my closet. Is that you Hemato?”
“Hemato does not know about your misdeed. But I can help you cover it up, if you can do one favor.”
I struggled to come up with a firm decision.
Then I made up my mind.
Outside in the midnight forest, where the shadows trees is illuminated by the glow of wolves eyes at night, you would think that there would not be many beast that humans have not yet conquered, yet here I was helping this girl, who had once been a bear like thing, find the Ursine that had murdered her in battle. I carried around a compass made from the bones of her previous enemies, and wished that all this would soon come to an end.
But at last, I had find the bear that took her life.
And at once, the girl in Silhouette morphed into this thing, shaped not quite like a bear, and giant bat like creature, with fans that can crush human bones. And I almost blacked out thinking that it would strike me.
But instead it bit the head off of another that bear that killed it so long ago.
The creature morphed back into the girl in silhouette. She had began to take on the form of my sisters back in France, whom I had stopped having a closer relationship, and wasn’t sure if they would even move to the US.
“I thought you had been in France.” I said.
“Do I look like someone you know Ehena?”
I woke up in my bed, as if it had all been merely a dream within a dream, a nightmare within a nightmare. Yet when I looked at my closet, it was dripping with a fowl stench of blood that was not quite human.
But something entirely different.
It seemed my sister was a bear-bat.
Le Kumabatto De L’Goules.
“I could make a sweetheart deal with you” said the ghoul.
“But people say that I have no soul.” said Ehena.
“I know someone with a soul when I see one.”
“What are you offering?”
“Before I died, I know that our father wasn’t the great.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I can give you the better to remove him from your life forever.”
When my father was around, he would barely pay attention to me, except when he was having one of his fits of rage. The few times I would see him would be when we would have dinner together, and it was fairly regularly are rather quiet household. But this figure, that reminded me of my older sister, whom had gone missing back when I was still living in France, was offering me something that was extremely tempting.
“But what would we do with his body?”
“I can offering you a chest, and you can lock him in there.”
“Why have you returned to this world?”
“I have unfinished business with one of my foes.”
At at one, pushing me onto the ground, with me reaching out to try to prevent falling, I saw her body begin to morph. Her jaw line began to extend, her eyes became glowing red, like the faint glimmer of coral reefs. And she grew an extra three feet in height, with her body completely in fur, with her silhouette illuminated by the glow of the fireflies in the midnight forest.
“What are you, you’re not my sister.”
“I had once been your sister.”
The thing, that didn’t look like other types of bears, bolted into the forest. With a deep growl that reverberated through the forest.
It was the next morning, and I woke up with the texture of leaves in my bed. I looked inside my closet, and found, to my horror, those glowing red eyes, those of that thing that had once been my deer sister, but had become something else.
I had sold my soul to my dead sister.
But now it was time for school.
I went outside during lunch break to visit with Hemato-Tomato after school. Here, while reclining on the school wall her, I asked “Hey Hemato, are you actually that one thing that keeps visiting me in my closet?”
“What do you mean Ehena?” Hemato asked.
“Well I’ve been visited by this weird thing, a shadow figure, that would I almost describe as bear shaped. However, when I look into its eyes, it get the hint that it’s something altogether to human.”
“Well there is this phenomenon called Shadow people. Have you heard of them?”
“Isn’t that usually a result of sleep paralyses?”
“Well it certainly can be, but not always. I used to be visited by them as well. Although I never recalled specifically being visited by a bear like thing.”
“What did you see?”
“It was more like this man in a black trench coat, and a top hat. He would carry around a cane, and seem as if to hop out of time.:
But if us seemed to be equally perplexed about what we saw, as in both cases there simply wasn’t a rational explanation for what we witnessed. It suppose it’s suppose on those nights, after I stabbed my father, I would experience sleep paralyses, and had trouble with sleeping sense I was very young. As far back as I could remember.
I was hesitant to discuss more about what I witnessed, thus said made my farewell. And at that point, I wasn’t sure if I would ever see my girlfriend again.
“Somebody cut the grandma out of the TV pilot.” It was one of those things someone who lives solely to watch midnight sitcoms would say, after a day at work. Father seemed to exclusively care about the nuances about why a show might cut the grandma out of a TV sitcom. He seemed blissfully unaware of the fact that he would make my life comparable to that, and not in a positive way. As if my very existence was a joke to him. “You see, a lot of people think she was the main character of show to begin, and now they switched completely to having the grandpa be the main lead”.
There was some controversy that came out years later, that got upset about the direction the sitcom was taking, and wanted no part about how the show was going down. She was the one that was made to look like the bad guy for the fact that the character was made to dress like a girl from the Netherlands. Despite the social taboos that were present at the time, and the internet becoming a wave of cancel culture, targeting of minorities whom often wrote such scripts.
But I never had that option to simply bow out of a TV script, as my whole life was like a badly written sitcom going fast forward, with no real off button, flowing infinitely in one direction with no stop in sight.
My life was a badly written musical.
And everyone else was screeching besides me.
“Ehena, I have come to bring you to hell with me”, a shambling corpse that had once been Ehena’s father
“I didn’t want to be around you in life, do you expect me to want to be around you in the after life?”
I woke up in my bed, with the door to my closet ajar, as if something had been in there waiting for me inside. Instead as I peeked within, there was nothing there. Except I could here the voice of the beast that offered to take his soul for me. My relationship with him had not been quite the same after mom died back in France, so it was only a matter of time until I declared my independence.
Part of my dream was that the casket had crumbled into dust, but as soon as I walked up the stairs in my birkenstocks, I found that the casket for which I had kept him remained. I struggled to think about what I should do with his body, as the blood for which I slit his throat was still fresh.
I could here the door banging, while I waited paralyzed an unable to move, with a S.W.A.T team outside the window.
I had no idea how exactly they had found out that I live alone, as I don't have family in France I'm close enough to come take me home. However when I had upstairs to check on the family chest, inside was the stabbed body of my father, and I could see the shadow figure looming in the shadows that taunted me while it slowed returned into its bear like form.
"You had done well to defend me while in my human form, and you have my thanks. But for now I shall leave you". said Kumabatto.
"But where where will you go in the future?" I asked.
"Somewhere fear away, to visit another human in need. Are you sure you don't want to come with me?"
"I'm not afraid for what the state might do to me."
"You know you'll be guillotined?"
"C'est le vie, mes vie en rose."
And with that, the bear-bat faded into another dimension.
I could here the S.W.A.T coming up the stairs, and took out my butcher knife. I stood by the side of the attic entrance, and waited to strike. When the first came, the made with the AK47 never knew what hit him. Then suddenly I blacked out, and woke up in a sterile prison cell. Here, I could see the sound of a guillotine blade dropping in the execution room.
A man in shadows came to my door, knocked, and said: "It is Ehena."
I am blind folded, and lead to a room strapped onto a table. The executioner removed the fold once my neck was locked in.
I could see my own reflection in the mirror, of my body locked in the guillotine. With the fading sound of the "ice cream changes" playing on the radio, that morphed into a black metal band.
My last fading vision is an angular blade slamming down on my neck.
Then my head starring at the blade, dripping with blood.
My last dying memory was: “The smell of those particular types of fumes. The smell of burning corpses, the total incineration of human remain.”
It wasn’t the usual kind of conversation, where people would simply talk about what was going on during their day, we simply didn’t have that kind of relationship. Me and Hemato-Tomato, trusted either other for emotional support, that it seemed like nobody else was giving. I didn’t know much about what was going on in her family life, but she would always make remarks like these that would make me wonder what exactly she did after school hours.
“I had never considered the idea.”
“It’s nice, although I’m not sure how useful it is compared to using charcoal to make drawing ink.”
I resisted the tempted to want to hurl out my insides. And knowing Hemato’s oddities, I wasn’t sure if she would get a kick out of my temporary misery and illness. And it wasn’t like I had more functional people to spend my time with, as the type of country that US had evolved into, meant that there wasn’t many people whom would opt to hang out with a French immigrant.
Even among Japanese immigrants, there wasn’t that many whose father came from France. They might be able to relate to not being able to talk in he Japanese language, but they wouldn’t understand specifically why I would know Francais better than Nihongo.
And because of that, we would hang out after school, as outsiders, while she would fantasize about turning people’s corpses into ashes.
Ashes to ashes, rust to dust.
Mes vie, le Ehena de mort.
I observe Hemato-Tomato griefing on my severed head from the clouds in the sky, and I come down as if to hold Hemato in a final embrace. And yet something feels different about her, as she can’t seem to let go on the severed head that belonged to my corpse.
“Humans, how they take things for granted. Use minorities like playthings; those of us whom live by day, and sleep by night. And those whom browse the city streets looking for a fight. And yet if I must kill, then I must kill everyone. Every last human, till this there is nothing of left on this Earth.”
I am trapped in this mortal coil, with no proper way to pass on to the after life. Instead I here the voice of a man reading me a bed time story, while my severed head is plugged into a recovery tank.
It is because of her affection, that I cannot pass on.
For I am not merely a memory, but her desire for revenge.