I have blood on my hands: such beautiful young life, and all taken, because of me.
No – not because of me. Is it my fault the shamans and sorcerers keep summoning me out of the spirit world, using requisite young males as hosts? Not my fault they need to feed them a horrid substance, right on their 21st year of existence on the physical plane, put them into the trance, bind them in a circle sealed with powerful spells. Not my fault that they die after I am sent back.
I was once a young man myself, selected to apprentice the most powerful mage in the land. He taught me all his secrets in grueling sessions. Then we would rest, eat, talk. And make love, oh, such love and contact as can only be accomplished by the most powerful sorcerer in the land and his very talented protégé. It was paradise – for a time.
The jealousy that seems to permeate all of existence did not leave us untouched. Maybe it was my lingering look on a young lady in the marketplace, or the unwanted attentions, towards me, of a lustful merchant – not my fault.
One night my sorcerer, the one I loved, the light of my life, attacked me in a rage. He left me battered and bruised in the tower where we lived. Upon recovering, I tried to leave, with the aid of another sorcerer. He caught up to us as we crept along a trail out of the city. He screamed at us and began hurling spells. By that time, I had learned some of my own. The other sorcerer and I fought back, with everything we had.
When my master threw the Spell of Invincible Doom at me, I knew he had lost his mind. But there was no help for it. My body vaporized, and I was turned into a wandering spirit – forever.
Upon my first summoning and return, I learned that the other sorcerer had managed to surprise the Master, while he was focused on me. My Master and lover had finally been destroyed by a blessed dagger, dipped in dragons-bane. But his books in the city tower remained – including the book of summoning.
Master’s spirit has been trapped for all time by the dagger’s magic, or so I can hope. But every score of years, some fool has to drag out the book of summoning, and I find myself yanked back to the physical plane, to try and tell the idiots to Stop Brining Me Back and Destroying Young Men!
Apparently there is an endless supply of criminals and slaves – and foolish young sorcerers – because they keep doing it. So I leap through the years, finding myself in some young gorgeous body, better to be admired from the outside, but instead trapped within, feeling his agony as life ebbs away, right in his prime. Sometimes they have magnificent erections, and that makes it doubly agonizing.
For this ghost remembers, and feels. I leap onwards, unable to stop, wishing only one thing: that the dagger would have found me instead.
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Bio: Mike Wilson has been writing fiction and poetry since 2003. He lives in Des Moines, Iowa.
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