in-between spaces
kate

Before you die, no one ever says anything about having to make choices.

You're supposed to make your choice beforehand. Black, white, Heaven, Hell, reincarnation, oblivion -- choose it now, make your choice, prepare for your afterlife now because when you die, you're automatically shipped into whatever you've chosen. Or whatever has been chosen for you.

No, no one ever says that you are given a choice. Glowing white purity on the left, raining fire and brimstone on the right. One or the other, Ethan Rayne. Make your choice.

If I had known I had to make a choice, I would have never died. Never let my T-cell count get higher than my IQ, never let the disease take control of me instead of my magick taking control of the disease. I was, after all, the greatest magician in the history of my species (save old poor Tom-o- Bedlam, who I could never best), and if I wanted to live forever, I could have lived forever.

But I was tired, and there just wasn't anyone to bother anymore. I suspect you made your choice easily, Ripper, going off to be with your Slayer, and her friends, in whatever variation of Valhalla exists for warriors against darkness. Did you get a heroes' welcome? Are you now safely ensconced in a castle, with a goblet of mead beside you, while the ancients talk of Grendel and Rangarok?

You were bound to have chosen your afterlife, bound to have realized what was waiting for you, bound to have spent those cold bitter years of loneliness wrapped up in your own imaginings, planning what your death would entail.

Never expected to live longer than her, did you? Never expected to outlive them all? I know I never expected to outlive you, my careful, faithful friend. I assumed that, one day, you would be standing over my corpse, that final spell gone horribly wrong, and maybe you'd be laughing. Or, at least, smiling ruefully, knowing that you had survived everything I had done.

I never expected to end up here, having to choose my afterlife.

I worshipped Janus for longer than I knew you, Rupert. I spent my life worshipping my binary god, refusing to choose just the 1 or the 0. I craved the liminal space, I craved the chaos of the in-between. I was evil and I was good. I was dark and I was light. I fucked girls...

And I loved you.

The in-between spaces are my home now. I refuse to choose.

 

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