Submitted for the April 2024 prompt: Meta-Sci-Fi

You stand, restless, halfway to being drunk, at the solitary bookshelf in what is now your quarters.

 

Your fingers search for and find The Last Dullahan 2239 — a first edition, no less.

 

God, could you be any more predictable? What in God’s name is a Dullahan?

 

It is familiar, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. Thin streaks of blood and what you suspect are tears colour the decades-old pages. A faint whiff of your scent lingers on the puckered edges, and its spine crinkles, misshapen and cracked, from frenzied opening and closing. A tattered bookmark charts your progress. You open the book as you have done many times before.

 

* * *

 

Thundering through the gnarly gorse.

Midnight black upon her horse.

Charges she

In search of thee.

 

A spine-formed whip

Clutched in her grip, Terror by her side.

A mouldy head beneath snug arm

Escorts a rotting makeshift bride.

 

Should she espy you on the way

It’s best to bow your head and pray.

A basin of blood is your boon

Forfeit, it’s said for your head, too soon.

 

* * *

 

“You do understand, don’t you, Nemi, that you’re me?”

 

She won’t stop talking to you. You try not to listen, but you can’t help it.

 

“What do you mean?” you ask her.

 

“Soon, you will understand who and what you are.”

 

You’re still trying to decide who you are, yet you remember the night you met and its gore-infused aftermath.

 

You take another swig of Selars, ignoring the intrusive memory and her inquisitive voice, and head to the bridge of the Repository Class 1 Gunship. Stumbling a little, you stagger and fall against decomposing Rokeby, whose body slides sideways, his bloody head grazing your arm as it dislodges and lands with—

 

“Don’t say a thud. They’ll expect that,” she cautions.

 

“I won’t.”

 

She thinks this is your first culling, your first meeting. She has no memory at all. They exist only for you.

 

—a squelch. By then, you are beyond caring. He was the last crew member and the most difficult to subdue, but it had to be so.

 

“Why did you remove them all?” A touch of rebuke in her tone.

 

How dare she question you?

 

You swallow, take a deep breath and let it out again slowly.

 

“What’s wrong with you?”

 

“I don’t usually do it like this,” you confide.

 

“Yes, this is more disordered than before.”

 

Some had made it onto the ship and infiltrated your crew, but you’d dispatched them all to be certain. You were right. You had to be sure. Sacrifices were made to prevent your risk of cross-contamination with such primitive lifeforms.

 

You attempt to overwhelm her by chanting, but she continues to niggle. Same question again, and again, and again. Oblivious to what she’s done, she blames you, has always done so, but enough dwelling on the past.

 

Nemi had never hurt another soul, yet every waking moment was a nightmare for you, or was it?

 

You realise the self you’ve been lately is a better one.

 

“Don’t lie to yourself; it serves no purpose,” she says.

 

She continues talking. You dispel her words, close your eyes and listen to the system sounds perforating the insistent chatter. You cannot see the ship’s exterior but know the frontal air is getting hotter, becoming plasma, before glowing incandescently and suffusing the vessel in light as you re-enter this planet’s atmosphere.

 

You imagine rain on the surface. Great drops hurl themselves from the amber sky, drenching the planet. Their God is crying tonight. Scalding tears that mingle with yours.

 

How could any omniscient being let things like this happen to its creations?

 

Another rotten world rotates below, full of vile, mouth-breathing imitators who sleep easily, live freely, and breed incessantly. While you, a changeling, struggle daily with a legacy you never wanted or asked for.

 

You are almost there, and you find your mind drifting, relishing the thought of terror-stricken faces below as the ship tears through the heavens, seeking retribution. They deserve it. None are innocent. Vengeance is yours.

 

Your last vestige of weak humanity falls away, gliding to the floor, revealing the mottled trail of the Dullahan’s whip on your translucent skin, a telltale mark of an earlier visit to a shadowed land.

 

The quiet becomes noise-filled, awash with one creature’s childlike tears. You make a shushing sound, repeating soothing murmurs. Joy blooms for you. You, who have been forever alone until this moment.

 

Your only friend is here, the stronger Nemi. She, who stays within, surfaces now to guide you. Not a fracture, not a break, but a twin of sorts stronger than you, summoned by you.

 

Closer now, you hear her approach, kinder than you have known in your home world. It would be swift and painless this time, you hope.

 

The sound of hooves grows louder, drowning out all noise as the uncontrolled ship ploughs into the base, obliterating all in its path.

 

You see the form materialise fully, a midnight black rider. Purposeful horseshoe marks sear the floor’s remaining silica skin as she rides towards you, her motionless, willing prey.

 

You arch your flame-scarred throat. The headless one reaches to embrace you forever, and two lost souls become the one they always were.

 

You hear the sounds of burning metal, feel the lick of familiar enveloping flame, and welcome blessed long-sought peace.

 

Again.

 

You stand, restless, halfway to being drunk, at the solitary bookshelf in what is now your quarters.