Day 21: The Fool

Jail / Warden

Trees bleached black by darkness reached to a starless sky blackened by night. From treeline to treeline a cold mire wrapped its boundary, coloured black by the shoreless sea. Treacherous were these marshes. Like firm land they promised safe passage. Like stormy oceans they promised heedless undoing. When one is promised or the other, either contentment or courage prompts the journey. It is when both promises are made only where the fools tread.
On that night there was a fool. And he treaded the path marked with torches by fools before him.

The steps of a step were the reverse of those upon land. In the marshes, the foot’s descent is always soft and easy. The foot’s ascent is always hard. The groundless ground never seemed happy to depart from the wanderer that rests his boot within its embrace. But he never sank into the mire deep enough to never resurface. Not when wandering from torch to torch.

Far had he wandered from shore, and far to shore had he left to wander, when a gale cruised above the mire to quell the torch upon where he stood, and all torches before him and all torches behind him too. Never once had he felt the warmth of the flames he chased, yet once stolen chill did settle upon his limbs.
The fool remained with no path marked by embers but those that burned in his memory. But fickle is the memory of a fool, and the haze that lingered in his mind only grew with each second of hesitation. A path shrouded in darkness is akin to another path shrouded in darkness, his memory helpless to unveil the deception. Would the fool chance it? Would he be able to maintain faith in his recollection, and wander where it points?

But what had eluded him earlier had earned his heed. Luminous orbs in the distant blackness, the line of which their amber light led yet to be quelled by winds. The light before him limbed away from the road he remembered, for he remembered no other road than what vanished in the night. Ready proof like no other he is right not to rely on his memory. His journey through the mire resumed then, guided by these ephemeral glows.
Yet his efforts rewarded him not by passing another torch. The next light appeared distant, and it remained distant regardless of the length he treaded. Roads have been known to grow twice their length from the worries of their wanderers, yet even the faintest sign of headway to the light escaped the fool.
In the end, even that line grew pale, until even the nearest illumination was but a twinkle in the night, and soon was no more. Only the starlight glistened on the surface of the lagoon. Once again, he had nowhere to go.

It occurred to the fool, then, that what was once a starless night, remained starless even still. The fool found the reflection extended through the mire ahead himself only. Never behind.
What he had thought as stars were not caught on the surface from above, but shone from the depths below. With the dawning of such epiphany, the glow nearest him grew in size and brightness, from a lingering shimmer in the abyss into a skyless dawn.
Neither refuge nor comfort could the emerging light offer the souls lost to the night. For it was not of a guiding benefactor the fool had spotted, but of an angry phantom. A spirit who roamed the land of living men as a spectral blaze, lingering for as long as her furious fire could feed from the contempt and bitter longing she nurtured and grew and tasted when she was yet to be claimed by the grave.

From beneath the waves she sprung, the searing light of her furnace as bright when suspended over the waters’ surface as it had been underneath. Her face alight with a joyless caricature of a smile, she cackled frantically to herself as she beheld the fool with adoration warped by resentment and anguish.
A fence of wrought iron, or some hideous imitation thereof, twisted around her waist to encase her hips and legs in a black orb. Whoever imagined a metal claw as the bottom half of a woman’s attire could have no one in mind but her. For though the bars concealed scarcely anything, its purpose was not shielding her softness from the thirsty gazes of men, but rather to confine the flames of sickly hunger that permeated her being. And to confine the man she would name her prey.

“Ah… Ah~! He’s looking at me! The way he looks at me… It’s so… So…! Oh, gosh…. Oh goodness! He’s admiring me! That must be it! There’s no way he’s frightened~! What’s there to be frightened about? I’ve never harmed anyone for as long as I’ve lived~! I’ve always been the good girl~ Never did anything wrong, ever~! Or selfish~! Always lived to please~! Never ever complained~! Even when they passed me by~! Even when they stepped on me~! Shouted at me for no reason! TREATED ME AS SCUM WORSE THAN THOSE HOUSED IN MY PRISON!!! Ahaha~! Auhahaha~!!!”

The spirit soared across the rippling water in circles around the fool. He tried staring elsewhere, but his worries would not be content with ignorance of when the spirit would enact her hostile intentions.
“Spirit, my name is Douglas Wouldes. Please, forgive my intrusion. I did not wish to disturb you.”
Her floating stopped. She hovered in place, her neck twisting. Slowly, but never so slow as to stop. Even when her head faced the wrong way. Her unblinking eyes panned open, glued on her with emotions that defy expression.

“...Do I look disturbed? Auhahaha~! No. Don’t lie to me. You were right the first time! I’m a mess! A freak! Oh, how could I ever imagine anyone would think otherwise? You’re just like them! I know why you moved me there! Because you needed a warden? Hah! No. Nononono… I think not. That place is for the nastiest people. The ugliest ones. The unwanted! You threw me there because that’s what I am to you… Garbage!”
The clawlike appendages of her hands clasped around her face. She allowed her hatred to whip the flames around her into a wildfire. And though she was yet to bridge the gap between herself and the fool, already he feared the scorch would char his skin.
“I… I don’t think you’re garbage… I think… I think… I think you… You are pretty.”

It was no gasp that escaped her mouth, for the dead are deprived of breath. But the noise of delighted relief must have been what sound spirits make in its stead.
He immediately regretted his words.

“Auhahaha~! I knew it… I knew it~! The moment I laid my eyes on you I knew we were destined to be together~!”
One of the hemispheres of her cage, the one the fool faced, flicked wide open. She glided towards him, her arms stretching greedily out as if to collect him.
“You do not need to do this. I too have faced much cruelty in life. All too often, injustice reigns at the expense of the innocent. But the good in stalwart men and women are not so easily extinguished! You lived a life in service of doing good to others. That must mean something to you! Right? Even as you are now, that good person must still be with us.”

“Oh… Oh, how sweet those words are in my ears… I wish I met you when I still lived. But we can still be together now~! And I’ll never ever let you go~!”
The fool abandoned any allusions of escaping by running away. The moment he set foot in her domain, he was already at her mercy. His only recourse was bargain.

“Spirit, I wish you not to settle with someone because loneliness compels you. I want you to be together with someone who truly deserves you.”
“Douglas, my Douglas~! I know loneliness already~ It’s all I’ve ever known~! It is not the price of a happily ever after, nor is it its worth~! You are before me now~! Someone to keep me company forever~! And I know in the heart of my heart there is no one else out there for me~!”
Only a finger’s length away from eternal confinement against the spectral body of the wisp, he had but one last chance to utter something. Anything, to spare him that jail.

“Morgan Abrupt.”
The cage doors snapped together, merely an inch before the fool’s countenance. The smile of twisted adoration vanished from her face. In its stead, a smile of scorned righteousness appeared. The smile of a victim’s hope to at justice reignited.
“I see~! I figure we do have something to talk about after all~! But be warned, Douglas, my dear… If you cross me, I will not show mercy. I will haunt you for eternity. Never again will you know peace, until I have you back in my possession.”