"I don't understand."
"Dear Death girl, he fell in love with you and said screw everybody else. He left everything behind."
"But I don't remember any of it. How could- how could forget something like that?" Not recalling a date was nothing, but forgetting the one you loved was everything and it killed Alice. Then Vivic told her it wasn't her fault.
"He must've wiped your memory clean for you to be like this."
"But that makes no sense, why would he want me to forget? Why would he leave me?"
"Were you listening the other day? You aren't supposed to be alive!"
When The four Deaths learned of the prophecy, they delegated the job—getting rid of her—to Death of the West which he handed off to his most trusted, his eldest son.
"Made sense really—Sieg was our strongest; Fucking magnificent, I tell you. You gave him a twenty-something job and he'd reap five more just for kicks. He always kept his quota and when Death gave him that bounty, we all thought he'd be back in a second—an hour tops."
"But he never returned, Did he?"
Vivic's fire had dimmed now, and coupled with his current naked status, he resembled a lil Cherub readying to cry. "A year went by and not a drop. So Death sent his next best, his flashiest, and they searched and searched but Sieg didn't want to be found and he was stronger back then. So Milord went himself—first time Death left his throne since the great flood, you know? They're not supposed to leave their thrones, Licé. Never supposed to leave their thrones. Now I forget the specifics but scuttlebutt is when Lord Death finally found him, Sieg was in an Asylum. What he did next varies by account my young miss, but I heard Death not only took away his immortality but cursed him too. With what? I couldn't tell ya, but It must be true because the Siegen that you now know today? why, he's nothing like the one I was born for."
#
Now back along the riverbed, Sieg went to lay.
The water was warm and his muscles sore from all the lifting and pounding that had made up his day, it was the price he paid for loving working with his hands this much. He also loved earning his breaks, so he closed his eyes just a second... just to rest them a smidge.
So opening his eyes to the cries of 1920s, well that gave him a fright like nothing had ever and with good reason. If he remembered right, this was the year he'd lost it all.
There in his boxers, he took to his feet and looked around, he was in this room: square, white, and blank as can be. A bed, a desk, and a window—neither very big. He remembered this room and just to make sure that it was where he thought it was, he lifted his head and there above the bed—just where one would put a pillow —were a cluster of crayon drawings of birds...Chickadees.
"The asylum." And just as he breathed this, the door—which only opened from the outside— swung inward and two people came in. A woman in a straitjacket came in and behind her, an old orderly.
Soon as he closed the door though, every bit of old melted away like smoke, melted away til Sieg was left to stare at his past dressed in a nurse's whites.
"Are you alright, Chickadee?" He undid her bonds and she responded with a kiss, wrapping her leg around him 'til he completely lifted her off the ground.
"Controlling that all day has been a bane, Sieg." Was what she said when he put her down onto the bed, breathing all heavy and regarding him from underneath her eyelashes, she told him. "Come."
And he came, thrice at first, then twice a second and once at last.
When they finally rose from that bed, the sun had as well and as its first rays fell into the room all dim, they revealed every red spot on the woman's body...every place he'd bitten and licked bore his mark and him, hers. There were trails on his back with budding little beads of blood appearing as if blooming flowers, but he paid it no mind.
How could he? Her very presence numbed his every pain, her lips on his erased the world from mind, her arms just touching him killed his every worry. Aye, she was a drug with a delicious effect that he would lust after again and forever.
He took her chin into his hand and admired the innocence in her eyes. That horrible haircut they gave the patients here somehow worked her wonders. Sieg couldn't believe it. "You know I love you, you know it, right? You know that I would burn this world to the ground just for you, right?"
"I know it well."
"Good, I might never get to say it again." She got agitated asking him what he meant to no answer, so Sieg did something he'd stumbled upon by accident, something he knew that calmed her. He kissed the inside part of her right breast; no not licked, not bite...he kissed it and there was nothing sexual to it, just his affection.
She felt it and that coupled with his hand on her waist calmed her quicker than any amount of sedative could ever manage. Sieg dressed quick, and her even quicker—when the nurses came in to administer her morning meds, they found the old orderly already sweeping the room.
And Sieg of the present watched it all, he didn't have to struggle to know how the year would end. Three months later and In the dead of night, his past would administer ten units of venom from a vampire he'd recently reaped into the sleeping Alice with a syringe.
His past would then go on to fix her memories, erasing himself and instead implanting a man named Jasper as her future. Lastly, dressed as the old orderly, he would help her escape...allow her to go far.
Before finally taking a needle to his finger and allowing his blood to hit the virgin earth.
