"Remember me." A voice whispered to me from the abyss.
"Remember me." The voice rang once more. Growing more intense.
"Remember me. Remember me. Remember me. Remember me. Remember me." As the voice kept growing more intensely, it echoed.
I heard this voice before. It sounded familiar.
I can feel my body getting pulled in by this voice, almost to a different plane, other than the one I live in.
'What is this?' I thought.
Ever since the bunker, I have been hearing the voices of the dead. I tried to ignore them most of the time, thinking I was going insane. I knew that I wasn't the best mentally, but I didn't expect it to affect my dreams, and in this way, of all ways. When I slept, it was usually a place where my mind could rest. It was a place I could find peace, but now, the voices—they found their way to me.
In the dark, I stand alone, voice getting louder and louder. Enough for me to fall to the floor and cover my ears.
The voices get louder, so much so that it hurts.
"Stop!" I scream out of pain. "Get out of my head." My head couldn't handle it anymore. High-intensity screeching filled the background as the voice continued to ring. I begged for it to stop, but it did not.
"Remember me. Remember me. Remember me. Remember me. Remember me."
Before I knew it, stars appeared in the sky and I stood on water, not below it, but on it. I can see stars shooting, faster and faster, creating lines.
"Remember me. Remember me. Remember me. Remember me. Remember me."
The world felt like it shook, not letting me catch my breath. My body felt heavy. I wanted to leave, but I couldn't. I was trapped in here.
"Remember me. Remember me. Remember me. Remember me. Remember me."
"Please leave me alone!" I begged once again, only to be ignored.
"Remember me. Remember me. Remember me. Remember me. Remember me."
The voices did not let up. I felt as though my connection to the world had vanished, pulling me towards this abyss. I have now succumbed to this voice. This world of pain.
The ground shakes once again. More intense than the moment before. I can hear another person's voice. This one is familiar.
"Wake up, wake up."
My body drifts out of this plane and back to the real world.
"A-Ael?" I say hesitantly.
"Are you okay?" He said.
Getting up from the floor, still being pitched back with the small ember lantern being in the middle, I was soaked in sweat, and my heart—my heart was racing.
" I-I don't know." Processing everything, I began to shake. My body succumbed to what I had done and did not want to let it go. It wanted me to remember every single one of their faces as their bodies lay on the floor. The blood that stains the walls. How my knife cut through their flesh, and how pools of blood formed.
"Sit here, I'll get you a towel."
***
"So what happened?" Ael asked.
"I don't know. One moment, I was asleep peacefully, then the next, I could hear a voice. The voice wanted me to remember them. It sounded familiar, but I couldn't make it out.
Ael stood there listening to me while we were in the kitchen. He had made tea to try to calm me down after I wiped all the sweat. The other were sound asleep.
My body shook in horror. "Why can't I get over this?" I looked at my hand, knowing it was stained by blood. Not long ago, these hands were pure and clean. They were hands that wanted to achieve a better life, not only for me, but for my mother as well. To have a life in the back lines, not in the wastelands where the sun beamed on us, begging for food and water.
We may have been a noble household, but that was only a title. A title to make us feel good. Tasked to take care of those the empire needed for the war. Tasked to later fight in it. They wanted me to be a foot soldier.
Ael looked at me. To him, killing was easy. It was to many higher-end nobles. They were taught to do so.
Breaking the silence, I hear his voice, "Killing a man, it can be hard, especially when you start thinking about it. They all have families, something they hoped for, something they wanted to achieve, a dream." He paused for a moment. "But do you want to know something, Eirian?"
I turned toward him as he leaned back on the counter, waiting for his answer.
"What you are feeling is what it means to be human. It is when you feel nothing that you should be concerned." He got up from the counter and walked toward me. He placed his hand on my shoulder. "You're a good person, I can tell, but don't let this one action define your whole life."
I let the words sink into me. "When you feel nothing, that's when you should be concerned." These words echo through my head.
"Do you feel anything?" I asked.
He doesn't reply immediately, though his eyes show me something. Something I didn't expect from him. It was a world of sorrow. It threw me in shock. Usually, he did not show this—no, he was the opposite. He would get excited when it came to moments of killing. I can still remember him killing those outside the bunker with ease, almost like he was placed on this earth to do so. He did not hesitate. He let the knife cut through flesh, not wavering the edge.
"We should get some sleep." He walked back to his bed, not answering my question.
For the first time, I saw Ael not just as a monster, but instead as a human. A person who can genuinely empathize and understand others. A person who felt sorrow, who was not this man who carried himself as something not serious. He was human.