“Losing someone, or even something can cause the kind of torment that’s hard to surpass, it can even lead to folly. And everyone deals with tragic loss in their own way… even those from the paranormal side.“

* 17 November 2022 — it’s the fourth revision of this story, I hope that I’ve finally edited it well.

REVIVAL

“Why does he cover their eyes with the shadow of a hand?” He asked her, fascinated by the painting that throned over the head bed. “Strange, who will ever know what’s simmering inside of a restless mind… same as you… same as when you brought me back to life on that night,” and he wickedly laughed.

“Perhaps it’s the shadow of the hand that obscures her visions,” she unconsciously said.

“We should throw this painting out!” He suddenly yelled, with his mouth foaming with rage. “Good I asked you the question, now I know that your subconscious wants you to remember… and that’s not good for me. Throw it away, now.” 

“Yes, master,” she replied in a trembling voice.

Immediately she unfixed the painting and rushed outside to throw it away while weeping silently. “What have I done? What have I become?” She murmured achingly, “I’m not even a shadow of my shadow. I’m erased. A minus sign.”

She tried to remember these hours that led her to despair, and where in an attempt to bring her love back from the dead through a forbidden spell, something else, a malicious and evil spirit, came through that bright door.

“He didn’t heard your call, but I did, so dry your tears now,” he told her right after that his ghost completely possessed the body of the beloved deceased. She couldn’t talk anymore, think anymore, move anymore, as heavy tears fell from her extinguished eyes.

“You opened that sealed door and brought me back from the dead;  you serve evil very well… thus from now on you will do whatever I’ll say. I am your master, and you will always address me as such. I was once a powerful imperator, before my own people, all ungrateful, beheaded me.” But what she wanted to tell him on that day was that he really was a heartless tyrant, a spectre that sprouted from the realm of nightmares.

What went wrong? Where was her heart back then? Could heartbreaks lead to a folly of that extent? ― These were all the questions that kept her awake in the middle of these sleepless nights, where still, no answers whispered back to her.  

She had served him well, stayed quiet all along, pitying her own self for shaping her own tragedy. Then, it happened… his body started to decompose ― his skin peeled off like leaflets, his hair fell down, even his bones became flask, and hope suddenly lit her heart.

“What are you waiting! Prepare the spell for my rejuvenation, serve me.”  

“Yes, master, I am working on it,” she lied.

She bandaged his whole body like a mummy, and patiently waited. As days went by he became weaker and weaker, till the point where he couldn’t even talk, and she became stronger and stronger, where she could feel life again flowing in her body, freed from her own spell.