Chapter 15: Chapter 12

A fresh start. A new beginning. Call it whatever you want, it doesn’t change the fact that I lost all memories. But I wasn’t unhappy with this at all as I didn’t even know that I lost anything. In fact, everything felt so cosy that I wished it would stay like this for a while before I thought about where or who exactly I was.

The comfortable bed made me feel like I was laying on clouds, the blanket kept me warm and the up and down movement of what my head was resting on immediately gave me the feeling that I wasn’t alone in this world. I loved every single part of this moment, but it ended way too quickly as all great moments do.

With my awakening from my deep slumber, the gears in my head began to work slowly again. I began to realize that I was hugging a person I didn’t know in a place I couldn’t remember. My memories were a sprawling emptiness, encroaching every nook and cranny of my being. My newfound knowledge of not knowing anything at all made me slightly nervous. The good feelings were gone, replaced by uncertainty and a hint of fear.

Slowly but surely, I opened my eyes and saw a normal, yet unfamiliar wooden wall. I knew it was a wall, I even knew what it was made of, but I couldn’t discern where I got this knowledge from. My next reaction was to look upwards towards a god that was smiling so gently, so lovingly that my fear immediately dissipated.

“Who are … where am … who am I?” Confused, I clung onto the only thing that felt strangely familiar, the god I was hugging tightly. For whatever reason, I just knew that I was safe as long as I was with him.

“You …” He hesitated, seemingly unsure what to say, but quickly collected himself afterwards. “You are my daughter, the person I love.” His words made me so happy that I was basically beaming. His last word, in particular, made my heart skip a beat and I felt a warm feeling in my chest.

“And who are you?” He introduced himself as my father, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t accept that as it just felt not right to see him like that.

“I am Askatesh, the god of death.” Although it was a weird name, it was miles better than calling him, father or dad.  Still, I didn’t want to simply call him by his name either as I wanted there to be something special between us.

“Askatesh … Askatesh … can I call you Aska?” Out of nowhere, he began hugging me back and started smiling brightly. I was overjoyed by this sudden development, even though I couldn’t exactly say why it happened.

“Sure thing. Can I give you a name in return?” I nodded quickly, more than happy to be given a name by him. “Do you like Lucinda?”

“I love it!” I closed my eyes and smiled even more as I thought about the name. It felt just right to be called like that, so in a sense, I really loved the name even when I wouldn’t be named like that by him.

“I knew you would say that.” He smiled knowingly and made me sit upright. While he caressed my cheek, I was able to catch a glimpse of his body, at least the part that wasn’t covered by clothing that was seemingly made out of silk. While I couldn’t exactly call him incredibly strong, he had quite well-defined muscles. His hair had the exact same colour as mine, underlying his earlier words. “Lucinda, are you as hungry as me?”

I wasn’t. His question was pretty weird in the first place. Although I knew what hunger was, I couldn’t hunger right now due to being a soul. His question made absolutely no sense in hindsight, but at that moment, I thought that it wasn’t right to outright deny him.

“No?” He still stood up and began walking towards the door. I was still sitting on the bed and just wanted to cuddle again, but he apparently had different thoughts. He had something in mind and didn’t want to waste a minute waiting. He made that quite clear as he raised an eyebrow while looking towards me. Disgruntled, I stood up and followed him out of the room.

A hallway, made out of wood greeted me with lamps glowing in a gentle blue light. Barefooted, I followed him inside a kitchen where I immediately looked out of a window. I didn’t like what I saw, but neither did I hate it. I shrugged it off, not knowing what to think about this weird landscape where blue lights were walking in the distance. Aska was already seated at a table while watching me carefully. I thought that he was going to cook, but nothing indicated that he was going to do so.

“Uhm…” I didn’t know what to say. I was just reborn a few minutes ago, so did he really expect me to cook? Finally, after an awkward ten seconds or so, he interrupted the silence.

“How should I put it … I have no talent in cooking whatsoever. And because you need to learn this stuff anyway at some point, why not start now?” I could list hundreds of reasons why I shouldn’t be the one cooking right then, but I stayed silent. “So … ?”

Another ten awkward seconds later, it was my turn to break through the silence.

“I don’t know how to cook.” He knew what I was going to say. Before I finished my sentence, a cooking book appeared out of thin air and fell on the table with a loud thud. He immediately slapped the book once and sild it over to the very edge.

“This bad boy can fit so many recipes in it. You just have to follow every step and you will have a nice meal. Could you do this for me?” Just a second I was thinking of throwing the book at him, but my feelings won over me in the end. Disgruntled, but strangely happy to be relied upon, I picked up the book and opened the first page. “I suggest you start with noodles.”

I growled but started cooking anyway while Aska watched everything I did. It made me incredibly nervous and some smaller mishaps happened due to that. But still, after doing everything as described in the book, I placed two plates on the table and took my seat. Aska immediately started digging in but stopped after just one bite.

“I don’t like it. It´s too salty.” I tasted it as well but couldn’t find the hint of saltiness he was referring to which made me quite frustrated. I worked so hard for this but he wasn’t grateful in the slightest. He wanted perfection with his meals which wasn’t something someone could expect from a beginner. Still, I thought that it was my fault as I couldn’t see how twisted this relationship between us was. I was lovestruck with him, but he? He told me that he loved me as well but already made me feel so miserable after a short while.

“I … I´m sorry.” He tapped the table a few times while I looked downwards towards the noodles. I couldn’t look up and meet his gaze at all as I was already too occupied with keeping my tears in check.

“Try again.” I stood up slowly, picked up both plates and threw all of them in the trash can, plates included. Aska didn’t say anything and continued to observe me while I tried my best a second time. Sometime later, I finished and placed two new plates on the table. Once again, he only ate a little bit until the fork was resting on the plate again.

“I don’t like this either. It has too little salt.” I didn’t even try to taste the noodles as I was too occupied with wiping my tears away. I tried to hide everything naively but he obviously noticed.

“Stop crying and try again.” He was ruthless, didn’t care about my emotional state at all, but rather was satisfied as I picked up the plates and started anew. The tears obviously didn’t stop during the whole time I was cooking again and a few were falling on his plate as I placed it in front of him. I haven’t even done a plate for myself, but rather waited for his opinion until I would make the effort to put something on my plate.

“As expected, tears don’t do well with noodles. Try again.”  I felt so crushed, so sad that I just couldn’t do it anymore. The person I loved rejected everything I tried and seemingly didn’t care about me at all. I rushed towards the door, trying to get away from this painful situation, but he was faster than me. He didn’t even need to stand up, but rather held my arm and dragged me towards him as I was trying to run past him.

“Where do you think you are going?” The nonchalant Aska was replaced by something I didn’t expect. He was threatening me quite openly and held me closer as I struggled even more. “Calm down.”

“Please, Aska!” I was struggling and tearing up once more. I was trying to get free from him, but he only restricted my movement further by pushing me to the ground with his body weight. I kept struggling, but after one minute I gave up as I couldn’t break free at all.

“Lucinda, you need to learn this.” Now, he seemed more concerned than anything which made me think that I imagined his scariness. “How about you try two more times and then we can go back to the bed?”

“Really?” I nearly couldn’t believe it. He was so eager to get me out of the bed previously, but now he allowed me to get back to my favourite place. I nodded quickly and he released me from his tight grasp. Free to move, I wiped my tears away once more and stood up.

“Only if you give your best.” I did. Two times, I gave everything I had which wasn’t much and I still failed miserably. Both times, he found something to nag about, but he didn’t break his promise as I put a lot of effort into the noodles.

Still, I was happy as I jumped into the bed and melted in his embrace, even when he was so cruel to me a mere moment ago. I thought that he must have had good reasoning for what he had done and that knowledge kind of made it bearable, although I still hated every moment of my cooking adventure. Just as I was drifting into sleep, my godly pillow rudely spoke to me and ruined this heavenly feeling immediately.

“I have a proposal. How about we split the day in half? You decide what we do in one half and I get to choose what we will do in the other.” There was definite proof that he wanted to drag me out of the bed again, no matter what my opinion was. And yet, it was incredibly tempting to accept, just because I wanted to experience half a day of feeling so warm and secure. Still, half a day of torture didn’t sound nice either.

“Only if you stop being so mean.” No more pushing me to the ground, holding me in place. That was the bottom line I didn’t want to cross anymore. It was just too scary and strangely humiliating that he could do these things with me.

“If you don’t behave like a spoiled brat.” I was dumbfounded. I was only a few hours old at best, and he claimed that I was ever spoiled? Even back then I could see just how strange his words were, but I kept my mouth shut and nodded slowly. If I knew what would come, I wouldn’t have accepted, but I was young, tired and naïve. And so, I let the warmth hug me into sleep once again and didn’t care just how much Aska moved beneath me. Nothing could wake me up, at least, that’s what I hoped for.

I woke up abruptly as water rushed into my lungs. I immediately coughed, but that only helped in letting even more water inside of my lungs. My eyes were wide open, but it was incredibly dark around me. I knew that I was floating in water, but neither did I knew how I got here, nor why I couldn’t move at all. The darkness was scary, the water in my lungs hurt and I was completely unable to do anything. I suffered immensely during this time, but I didn’t give up until I died again, not because of lack of air, rather because my body stopped working because of a lack of energy.

These mere minutes I survived underwater kind of changed my view on a lot of things. Aska was in no way scary compared to that. I could talk with him and try to make him treat me better, but this force of nature was something I would never be able to change. The helplessness I felt during these minutes was way worse than what I felt as Aska pushed me to the ground, the pain was something a young girl should never experience.

“Aska, I´m scared! I don’t want to go there ever again!” The moment I woke up in my bed, I realized that this was too realistic for it to be a dream. At first, I was coughing, but after realizing that there was no water in my lungs anymore, I immediately begged Aska to help me. He seemed to know what was going on but pondered about an answer for a bit.

“Lucinda, this is the world you belong to…” I couldn’t understand what he was saying at all and his stern gaze didn’t make it better. After wiping my tears away, he continued, but looked at me as if he didn’t like what he saw. “you need to deal with it on your own. I cannot help you.”

During my first day of living, he successfully broke my heart. I already chose to ignore the previous incident because of my feelings but leaving me alone with this issue was just a bit too much. Don’t get me wrong, my love was still unwavering, but I certainly saw him in another light after that and my love started to get twisted, ableit only slightly.

“Aska, I need help …” I tried to beg even more, but he slapped me in return. Disgusted, he looked towards me as if he was looking at trash. I couldn’t bear looking towards him anymore and sank my head deeply into a pillow to hide my tears. I couldn’t understand what was happening anymore. He was forcing me to learn things like cooking, I knew that much, but I couldn’t wrap my head around how cruel he was towards me. He, as my father, was supposed to love me and care for me, but he dealt with me like I was unwanted.

“Stop crying and begging you spoiled brat. If you do that, you may have a chance to escape the fate of drowning again and again.” It hurt so much to hear him talk like he did, but it also strangely gave me hope. He was the adult in this house, so he must have known a lot of things I didn’t. Maybe his cruel behaviour was meant to push me further so that I didn’t have to drown as much? How utterly foolish of me to think that way, but it certainly calmed me down enough so that I stopped crying which immediately improved Aska`s mood.

That day, I swore that I would generally do whatever he wanted, in the hope of never experiencing drowning ever again one day. That mindset certainly helped me in living through this literal hell.

The first days were similar to each other. As soon as he woke me up, I was forced to cook for him different dishes. When it was good enough, he let me do it again, but if I failed for some petty reason, he threw the whole dish at me. Over and over I was cooking, generally more than one dish at once. He ate none of them.

After twelve hours though, everything was fine again. He was gentle and never complained as I was sleeping on top of him or when I was too frustrated to sleep and squirmed around quite a bit. He behaved like another person in this room and sometimes even tried to cheer me up when I was drowning again, but only when I didn’t cry. He hated absolutely every childish behaviour that I could possibly do. If I cried, he would generally make me stop or ignore me until I stopped on my own.

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And so, I stopped crying in front of him at some point. I stopped throwing a tantrum whenever something didn’t suit me and I stopped complaining about how my freedom was restricted every day.

He never left me alone and always had an eye on me. At first, I hoped that he was concerned about me, but I quickly realized that this wasn’t the case at all. He was monitoring my behaviour and after a week, he started complaining about things he didn’t like. I don’t know how often I heard that I shouldn’t walk around like a gorilla, how I was supposed to open a drawer or even how I should serve the dishes. Before I knew it, it was him who controlled my behaviour and he abused my willingness to obey him as much as he could. He wasn’t just educating me he was also changing me into the person he wanted me to be.

A month after I woke up, the girl who failed at making good food was nowhere to be seen anymore. I was cooking food gracefully now and moved elegantly around, even when it was inefficient. Aska even started to eat my food, at least a quarter of it. And so, I found myself eating together with him on a certain day.

“Aska, can you tell me why I am learning to cook?” In my opinion, my skills were already good enough, although still far from perfect in his opinion.

“You need to learn how to live as a human.” I already knew that he wanted me to have a broad skillset and started with the easier ones, but I still couldn’t get how I needed to make the finest food.

“Do humans always cook this much?” I doubted this heavily. If they always did it so excessively as I did, wouldn’t they run out of ingredients at some point? Or could they just make them out of thin air like Aska was doing?

“No…” I tilted my head, much to his displeasure. While he didn’t say anything about this specifically, I noticed that he didn’t like me doing that. Strangely enough, I started tilting my head more often afterwards, maybe as a last attempt to decide something on my own.

“Then w-“ He squinted his eyes and I stopped talking immediately as it was always a sign that I did something bad.

“Because I want to eat good food. Stop asking stupid questions.” His explanation was quite surprising but revealed more of his character at the same time. Some of his actions were illogical and egoistical and while I didn’t have a problem with that, I wanted to escape the fate of drowning quicker and I seriously doubted that I could convince the water to let me alone with spaghetti bolognese.

“… And why do I need to live like a human? I mean, I am a human, so should-“ He flipped the table to the side and all the plates flew towards the ground. Nothing stood in between us as he glared at me angrily, still seated and pointing his knife at me.

I on the other hand had still a knife and a fork with a bit of pancake on it. Stupefied, I looked back at him and expected him to explode in anger, but he surprisingly calmed down and even threw the knife away.

“You aren’t a human. You are a vampire. Sort of. And not completely yet, but that will fix itself in the future.” What a revelation for everyone! Well, for me it was one, so I listened to his next words closely. “You drink the blood of humans to survive, but you are more than your average vampire. You can drink water, eat food and behave a lot more like a human, but you have other restrictions.” I shouldn’t have listened so closely as the bit of pancake fell to the ground midway. It was already a waste that he threw the others on the ground, but I did hope to save at least one last piece of them for later. Just like him, I was beginning to turn into a glutton.

A bit disinterested, I started picking up the broken plates from the ground and threw them in the trash can. I shouldn’t have done that. The very next day, he wanted me to clean the house which he could do in a mere second.

And so, it continued, with a big difference between night and day. He was still abusive, both emotionally and physically, but it lessened considerably over time, in particular, because I was more successful in being the person he wanted me to be.

Soon after cooking and cleaning came washing clothes and even tending some plants. In short, he trained me to be the perfect housewife and this sexist actually succeeded with that. That all started to change with my first birthday though. It was a simple gift that changed how I viewed my relationship with Aska and my perception of myself.

It was a fish. More specifically, a goldfish. I was allowed to do whatever I wanted with it and so it was my responsibility to care about it as well. I immediately named him Cosmo and fell in love with him. I mean, he always looked at me like he forgot what happened three seconds ago and what he could do was fairly limited, but it did change the house I was living in a bit. Every change was welcomed and as I wasn’t allowed to go outside, I couldn’t bring forth said change myself yet.

But that wasn’t the best thing that day. Aska needed to leave for several days after my birthday which allowed me to do whatever I wanted. I didn’t know where he went, but I didn’t want to ask him that as I feared another slap on my cheek. And so he simply left, leaving me with Cosmo alone in a house that felt so empty all of a sudden.

At first, I walked towards the door, but it was sadly locked as well as any other window. Next, I tried out all things I was forbidden to do. Opening a room that I wasn’t allowed to enter? Check. Turned out it was a broom closet. I still don’t know why he didn’t want me to go there.  Opening another room that was absolutely off-limits for me as well? Well, that one was locked. Jumping on the bed? Well, I did exactly that. Excessively. Cleaning all the rooms super fast? I didn’t know why I wanted to try that out so badly, but it was as boring as I expected.

Honestly, there wasn’t much to do in this house at all, but Cosmo helped me through this a bit. The way he opened and closed his mouth was just … fascinating. How could a creature be so dumb that it didn’t understand when I made fun out of it?

I played with him three days in a row, but I grew more and more bored of him. I have seen everything he could do and as he certainly didn’t have to offer much, I was basically done with him. I didn’t understand why I was gifted Cosmo in the first place, but I understood that he was basically useless.

“What to do with this guy? …” I wanted to see everything this little fish could offer me and as I had seen everything, I considered that changing his environment was an acceptable solution to my problem. “Oh no! You need some fresh air, don’t you? I guess I need to save you from drowning then…”

I was a child. A child who was brought up by a sadistic god raised to fit his ideals. It was no wonder that I was a little bit … twisted. And so, I emptied the contents of the fishbowl on the floor and kneeled down beside Cosmo. He was flapping his little fins like crazy at first but soon started to slow down. With glee, I watched what he was doing as I have never seen this reaction from him.

Aska already told me much about fish, so I knew that he would die sooner or later, but I didn’t care at all at this moment. I wanted to see everything till the end. Cosmo continued to get weaker with time and his life soon ended. I poked him a few times with my finger, still smiling broadly as I finally have seen something new.

“Haa … that felt strangely good … I need to clean up this mess though.” Cosmo swiftly wandered in the trash can and the flood I caused was soon stopped by the actions of Mr. Mopp. Three days after that, Aska returned and noticed that the fishbowl was missing quickly.

“Cosmo … he … he died.” I gave my best at sounding sad, but in all honestly, I really wasn’t. From the beginning, I didn’t care about the life of this little fish, but rather about what he could provide me.

“That’s terrible … how did he die?” I gulped loudly but soon collected myself afterwards.

“He had … he had a heart attack.” What a bold and naive liar I was. There was no way he wouldn’t know that I lied to him considering how much I fiddled with my black dress, but I did hope that he would believe me.

“I´m so sorry Lucinda. I can gift you a new one if you want?” My lie paid off. Apparently. Still, did I want a new goldfish? The last one was already boring enough and I doubted that a new one would change much.

“Can I have another pet?” He obviously said yes. Whatever he wanted to achieve by gifting me pets, it wouldn’t stop with just Cosmo´s death. A day later, a guinea pig appeared right in front of me as soon as I finished cooking.

It was quite cute to see it nibbling on some straw and watch me full of hope for more food. And so I fed it, glad that my usual routine of the housework was broken up once again. It grew fat quite fast and half a month later, I was already bored of it once again. Because I really couldn’t abuse the animal too much with Aska always around, I started to put him on a diet that consisted of thin air, the fastest way to lose weight.

Aska didn’t care about the little guy previously, so he probably didn’t notice what I was doing and thus said nothing. The animal died a few days later in front of us, seemingly begging for help while it looked at me. I was truly thankful that it let me experience such a multitude of emotions and smiled as it died. Aska was seemingly bored and chewing on some bread I made previously. Boldly, I poked the guinea pig and even lifted him up a bit.

“He´s dead.” Aska looked towards the animal but only shrugged as his first reaction. Only after I disposed of it into the trash can, did he finally answer me.

“Cause of death?” He didn’t try to comfort me or anything as he already accurately grasped that I was the culprit, but I didn’t get that yet.

“Uhm … cancer? Can I have another animal next?” He nodded slowly and we both went after our usual routine shortly afterwards.

Drowning. That was Mobby, a lizard.

Broken neck through a high fall. Dumbo, a bird.

Lack of Oxygen. Neil, a hamster.

High blood loss. Dracula, a dog.

The list went on and on. For over a year, I was slaughtering pets left and right and I didn’t care that Aska must have caught up by then. In fact, I murdered the last pet I had, a one-meter long snake right in front of him. I was beaming because I finally found out why I couldn’t keep a pet for too long. It wasn’t that they were too boring, well that was probably part of it, but the main reason was that I liked to see their suffering. Suffering, I had to live through on a nearly daily basis as well.

“Have you finally realized?” Aska placed his hands on my shoulders and whispered into my ear. He was so close to me that I felt my chest tighten, not because of fear, but rather because I loved him so much, although my love started to get really twisted at this point. Still, I was also a bit worried.

“Will I get ever boring?” He wanted me to realize two things with all these animals. First, he wanted me to find out who I really was. A sadistic person that enjoyed the death of others. And second, that I was his pet, at least for now.

“Never.” He kissed me on my cheek and released me shortly afterwards. I sat there, beet red and with a fluttering heart in front of the bloody remains of a snake while Aska sat back on a sofa and watched me carefully. I was so engrossed in my own feelings that I nearly missed how Aska talked to me once again.

“I think you are ready to learn something else. Tomorrow, we change up your day.”

  

 

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