#21 of 100: Stolen Fragments of the Soul
Melania rummages through an abandoned lab, searching for a vial containing the stolen fragments of her soul.
Not fussed. I prefer the title over the actual story.
A pungent odour, similar to chlorine, pervaded the large, empty alchemist’s lab. Melania wrinkled her nose, but didn’t let the smell stop her from storming through and wrenching every cupboard door open.
“Paval isn’t here. Come on, we’ve got to keep moving,” Ursula said, though her gloved hand still rested on the hilt of her sword.
Melania ignored her. The alchemist’s location wasn’t important, all that mattered was what he had snatched from her. Paval had invaded her dreams and extracted parts of her soul. She was still haunted by the paralysis of her dream-self as he had kicked and stomped on her stomach, and by the acrid taste of her spirit as it churned up through her throat and into a flask he held to her lips. The only reason she hadn’t become a husk was because her wife, Ursula, had shaken her vigorously awake, scared by the sounds her throat was making as she slept.
Memories she once treasured were now lost to her, while others elicited no emotion. The grief she had felt after her mother’s murder had been replaced with boredom. She lacked a fear of death, a love of butterflies, amusement at bad poetry, anger at the whipping of horses. All she had retained was a tiny shred of directionless want. It had been Ursula who had steered that want into seeking out Paval.
The lab was too big to just be for one person. There were eight large desks cluttered with tubes, dried herbs, and unfamiliar equipment, as well as scrawled notes in a code Melania didn’t recognise. While a few vials were filled with colourful liquids, none of them felt like they related to her.
“There is more. The flasks didn’t just exist in the dream world, they existed in this one too.” Even Melania’s voice was flatter than before, a monotonous tone that had made Ursula wince for several days after the soul-stealing had happened.
Melania ran her fingers over the bookcases and the walls, looking for any signs of a secret passage. She wasn’t the only one who had lost part of their essence - across the city, men, women, and children were waking up devoid of love or hope. Somewhere there must be a treasure trove of soul flasks, she thought.
A thin black book jutted out of a bookcase and caught her eye. Complex Golem Creation. She yanked on it, and sure enough, there was a click and the scraping of stone. The bookcase began to rotate, slowly revealing another room.
“Wait!” Ursula yelled out, then sprinted across the room to where Melania was. The bookcase was about to rotate 180 degrees, blocking off access between the lab and storage room. Ursula thrust a stool into the gap, and the mechanism ground to a halt.
The room beyond held rows of standing shelves full of vials. Orbs of light hung at random intervals from the ceiling, giving the whole space a strange vibe as the colours in the vials were reflected onto the walls. Melania stared dully at the tiny labels. Each of them had unrecognisable symbols scribbled in black ink, followed by numbers.
“Look. These must be dates.”
“You don’t know that,” Ursula warned.
“If we find one with the date of when Paval entered my dream, we’ll find the missing fragments of my soul,” Melania continued, as if Ursula hadn’t interrupted.
The colour she had vomited out in her dream was a bluish-green, Melania remembered. It had been the same colour as her dress on her wedding day. When she found the right vial, she grabbed it and turned it over in her hand. The liquid had the consistency of honey, and shimmery specks of silver floated in it. When she unstoppered the vial a stench like burnt hair wafted out of it, and she doubled over as if she was about to retch.
“Don’t touch it.” Ursula said, striding towards her after hearing her gag. “You don’t know it’s yours, you don’t know it hasn’t been changed somehow. It could be toxic in this form. We’ve got to get it to an expert.”
“But I want it. This is me, in sludge form.”
Melania stepped back from her wife, and motioned for her to keep her distance. Then she put the foul-smelling vial to her lips and glugged its contents down.
The liquid seared her throat. She could hear it sizzling inside her, and once it reached her stomach it felt as if it was ripping apart the lining. Too late, she realised it had been taken when she was in her dream form, and thus she should have consumed it in her dream form too. She collapsed to her knees and pushed her palms against the cold stone floor.
Concentrating past the pain, Melania could feel some vital parts of her light up. Butterflies! Their delicate, colourful wings, the often ungainly but enchanting way they seemed to fly. Her mother’s body, wrapped up in linen, but Melania knew beneath that were horrific wounds inflicted by a stranger. The weight of the feeling, once again raw, made her want to curl up on the floor and never move again.
Other emotions started to trickle into her understanding of herself. The horrors of a war she had never been in. An all-encompassing love for the three beautiful children she didn’t have. The satisfaction of winning a singing contest she had never known existed.
She looked up at Ursula. The love she felt and the fond memories she had of their time together were now diluted by the emotions wrapped around three other lovers who she had never met. The vial she had swigged from contained the missing fragments of her soul, but it also contained the slivers of other people’s snatched souls. She was a blend of different people, and even the way my mind interpreted the colours of the room seemed to flicker between different states.
Ursula helped her to her feet, and together they staggered back out of the storage room. Melania wanted to explain what had happened to her, but a pit of shame had opened up inside her, further exaggerated by the shame a sliver of another soul felt about how they treated their sibling. She wondered if she, too, could now be considered a thief, albeit one through recklessness rather than greed.
As Ursula gave her an encouraging smile, Melania vowed to herself she would do all she could to return the fragments to their rightful owners.
Cracking story, a really haunting horror. I love the idea of a dream thief turned up to 11.
Also "This is me, in sludge form” is how I feel when I have a hangover.
Interesting fact:
Chlorine is odourless. The scent at swimming pools is Chloramines.
Chloramines form in pool water when chlorine combines with contaminants brought into the pool by swimmers. Think urine, perspiration, body oils and cosmetics.