Five Different Realities to Explore, and One to Avoid

by Bree Wernicke

There’s a reality where I save you, at the start. In that one, when I realise you’ve locked yourself in your father’s forbidden library, I break down the big oak door. (Yes, it’s a reality where I’m ten and have an axe.) I burst inside to find you scribing strange geometries upon the floor, and I destroy that summoning circle before any horrible succubus manifests within it. You’re upset I ruined your work, but after I explain, you’re grateful that I saved you from yourself. Then, we grow up best friends, although I’m just a kitchen boy and you’re a snotty lordling. In that reality, no succubus ever touches you. You develop no fatal obsessions.

Then there’s the one where I keep silent. In that one, I still follow you to university as your valet, paid to dress you and tie complicated cravats. This is still difficult, since my heart lifts every time you smile. In that reality, when you call me your friend, I can bear it. I do not demand to be more, nor resign in embarrassment in the next breath. I only swallow my pride and nod, curtly. I remain your devoted, uptight servant for decades. In that reality, I ensure you marry someone awful, who doesn’t like you having interests, and sets fire to all your grimoires.

Then, the one where I reach out. Where I see all those articles praising you over the years, and send a note to your obnoxious mansion. A simple, Hey, erstwhile friend of mine! Heard you’re being lauded and touted and fêted for your advancements in demonology. How’s it going? In that one, you write back. Over an awkward lunch, you confess you miss me, and I confess the same, and then we both take huge gulps of wine and pretend we never said it. In that reality, you tell me your tattoo idea, I say it’s terrible, and you take me seriously. Your mad theory stays mad, but stays theoretical.

Or better, the one where I stand up for you. When that damning essay appears in the papers, I speak out against it, and insist you have no succubus obsession; that truly, you’re a good man. I tell you to ignore the gossip of lesser demonologists, to be strong, and you listen. In that one, you carry on producing brilliant taxonomies of the hells, and writing safe-summoning pamphlets. You don’t spiral into a deep alcoholic melancholy that further ruins your career. Nor do you publicly swear elaborate vengeance upon all other demonologists before disappearing for three weeks. In that reality, I don’t have to go looking for you, fearing what I’ll find.

There’s also the one where I confront you. An hour ago, I found you in your study, alive and, shockingly, sober. That was all I’d needed to know. You kept insisting that you didn’t appreciate the concern from me of all people, that I had no right to care, that I clearly despise you as much as everyone else. At some point while ranting, you pushed up both your sleeves.

I saw those silver lines, Alexei, crawling up your arms. Of course I did.

In that reality, I grab your wrist and hold it up. You freeze. I demand to know what you’re planning. You won’t tell me, but by the way you sigh, it isn’t good. So I tear your shirt open to find the silvery tattoos inked in fine lines all over your bare skin, in impossible shapes. Shifting, softly glowing whorls. One of those summoning patterns you’re so famous for. And I tell you no. I tell you that you can’t strike some suicidal bargain with a demon using your own skin as a canvas, you bastard, because I love you, I love you, and if you’re going to destroy yourself, you’ll have to get through me first. In that reality I trace the tattoos, feel them pulse under my fingertips, and then I kiss you until you learn what you can live for.

But this is the reality we’re in. The one where I saw those tattoos on your arms, pretended I didn’t, and left.

In this one I also dithered outside in the darkening square, meaning to go back in and tell you how I really felt, but angry enough to second-guess myself. By the time I barged back in, you’d already gotten halfway through the summoning. You froze, mid-chant, when you saw me. The spell stuttered and failed. The silver tattoos flared, blinding, before they cracked, and cracked you with them.

This is the reality where I’m pulling you back together but pieces float away in grey drifts, like ash and like a dream, and you’re falling to dust in my arms. This is the one where I say, Alexei, I love you, but it takes me far too long. By the time I’ve said it, you are gone.

Bree Wernicke is an actor and speculative fiction writer living in Los Angeles. Her work has been nominated for the Rhysling Award and published in Strange Horizons, Baffling Magazine, Small Wonders, and more. Her website is breewernicke.com.